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_ On one of the first days of May, some six months after old Mr.
Touchett's death, a small group that might have been described by
a painter as composing well was gathered in one of the many rooms
of an ancient villa crowning an olive-muffled hill outside of the
Roman gate of Florence. The villa was a long, rather
blank-looking structure, with the far-projecting roof which
Tuscany loves and which, on the hills that encircle Florence,
when considered from a distance, makes so harmonious a rectangle
with the straight, dark, definite cypresses that usually rise in
groups of three or four beside it. The house had a front upon a
little grassy, empty, rural piazza which occupied a part of the
hill-top; and this front, pierced with a few windows in irregular
relations and furnished with a stone bench lengthily adjusted to
the base of the structure and useful as a lounging-place to one
or two persons wearing more or less of that air of undervalued
merit which in Italy, for some reason or other, always gracefully
invests any one who confidently assumes a perfectly passive
attitude--this antique, solid, weather-worn, yet imposing front
had a somewhat incommunicative character. It was the mask, not
the face of the house. It had heavy lids, but no eyes; the house
in reality looked another way--looked off behind, into splendid
openness and the range of the afternoon light. In that quarter
the villa overhung the slope of its hill and the long valley of
the Arno, hazy with Italian colour. It had a narrow garden, in
the manner of a terrace, productive chiefly of tangles of wild
roses and other old stone benches, mossy and sun-warmed. The
parapet of the terrace was just the height to lean upon, and
beneath it the ground declined into the vagueness of olive-crops
and vineyards. It is not, however, with the outside of the place
that we are concerned; on this bright morning of ripened spring
its tenants had reason to prefer the shady side of the wall. The
windows of the ground-floor, as you saw them from the piazza,
were, in their noble proportions, extremely architectural; but
their function seemed less to offer communication with the world
than to defy the world to look in. They were massively
cross-barred, and placed at such a height that curiosity, even on
tiptoe, expired before it reached them. In an apartment lighted
by a row of three of these jealous apertures--one of the several
distinct apartments into which the villa was divided and which
were mainly occupied by foreigners of random race long resident
in Florence--a gentleman was seated in company with a young girl
and two good sisters from a religious house. The room was,
however, less sombre than our indications may have represented,
for it had a wide, high door, which now stood open into the
tangled garden behind; and the tall iron lattices admitted on
occasion more than enough of the Italian sunshine. It was
moreover a seat of ease, indeed of luxury, telling of
arrangements subtly studied and refinements frankly proclaimed,
and containing a variety of those faded hangings of damask and
tapestry, those chests and cabinets of carved and time-polished
oak, those angular specimens of pictorial art in frames as
pedantically primitive, those perverse-looking relics of medieval
brass and pottery, of which Italy has long been the not quite
exhausted storehouse. These things kept terms with articles of
modern furniture in which large allowance had been made for a
lounging generation; it was to be noticed that all the chairs
were deep and well padded and that much space was occupied by a
writing-table of which the ingenious perfection bore the stamp of
London and the nineteenth century. There were books in profusion
and magazines and newspapers, and a few small, odd, elaborate
pictures, chiefly in water-colour. One of these productions stood
on a drawing-room easel before which, at the moment we begin to
be concerned with her, the young girl I have mentioned had placed
herself. She was looking at the picture in silence.
Silence--absolute silence--had not fallen upon her companions;
but their talk had an appearance of embarrassed continuity. The
two good sisters had not settled themselves in their respective
chairs; their attitude expressed a final reserve and their faces
showed the glaze of prudence. They were plain, ample,
mild-featured women, with a kind of business-like modesty to
which the impersonal aspect of their stiffened linen and of the
serge that draped them as if nailed on frames gave an advantage.
One of them, a person of a certain age, in spectacles, with a
fresh complexion and a full cheek, had a more discriminating
manner than her colleague, as well as the responsibility of their
errand, which apparently related to the young girl. This object
of interest wore her hat--an ornament of extreme simplicity and
not at variance with her plain muslin gown, too short for her
years, though it must already have been "let out." The gentleman
who might have been supposed to be entertaining the two nuns was
perhaps conscious of the difficulties of his function, it being
in its way as arduous to converse with the very meek as with the
very mighty. At the same time he was clearly much occupied with
their quiet charge, and while she turned her back to him his eyes
rested gravely on her slim, small figure. He was a man of forty,
with a high but well-shaped head, on which the hair, still dense,
but prematurely grizzled, had been cropped close. He had a fine,
narrow, extremely modelled and composed face, of which the only
fault was just this effect of its running a trifle too much to
points; an appearance to which the shape of the beard contributed
not a little. This beard, cut in the manner of the portraits of
the sixteenth century and surmounted by a fair moustache, of
which the ends had a romantic upward flourish, gave its wearer a
foreign, traditionary look and suggested that he was a gentleman
who studied style. His conscious, curious eyes, however, eyes at
once vague and penetrating, intelligent and hard, expressive of
the observer as well as of the dreamer, would have assured you
that he studied it only within well-chosen limits, and that in so
far as he sought it he found it. You would have been much at a
loss to determine his original clime and country; he had none of
the superficial signs that usually render the answer to this
question an insipidly easy one. If he had English blood in his
veins it had probably received some French or Italian commixture;
but he suggested, fine gold coin as he was, no stamp nor emblem
of the common mintage that provides for general circulation; he
was the elegant complicated medal struck off for a special
occasion. He had a light, lean, rather languid-looking figure,
and was apparently neither tall nor short. He was dressed as a
man dresses who takes little other trouble about it than to have
no vulgar things.
"Well, my dear, what do you think of it?" he asked of the young
girl. He used the Italian tongue, and used it with perfect ease;
but this would not have convinced you he was Italian.
The child turned her head earnestly to one side and the other.
"It's very pretty, papa. Did you make it yourself?"
"Certainly I made it. Don't you think I'm clever?"
"Yes, papa, very clever; I also have learned to make pictures."
And she turned round and showed a small, fair face painted with a
fixed and intensely sweet smile.
"You should have brought me a specimen of your powers."
"I've brought a great many; they're in my trunk."
"She draws very--very carefully," the elder of the nuns remarked,
speaking in French.
"I'm glad to hear it. Is it you who have instructed her?"
"Happily no," said the good sister, blushing a little. "Ce n'est
pas ma partie. I teach nothing; I leave that to those who
are wiser. We've an excellent drawing-master, Mr.--Mr.--what is
his name?" she asked of her companion.
Her companion looked about at the carpet. "It's a German name,"
she said in Italian, as if it needed to be translated.
"Yes," the other went on, "he's a German, and we've had him many
years."
The young girl, who was not heeding the conversation, had
wandered away to the open door of the large room and stood
looking into the garden. "And you, my sister, are French," said
the gentleman.
"Yes, sir," the visitor gently replied. "I speak to the pupils in
my own tongue. I know no other. But we have sisters of other
countries--English, German, Irish. They all speak their proper
language."
The gentleman gave a smile. "Has my daughter been under the care
of one of the Irish ladies?" And then, as he saw that his
visitors suspected a joke, though failing to understand it,
"You're very complete," he instantly added.
"Oh, yes, we're complete. We've everything, and everything's of
the best."
"We have gymnastics," the Italian sister ventured to remark. "But
not dangerous."
"I hope not. Is that YOUR branch?" A question which provoked much
candid hilarity on the part of the two ladies; on the subsidence
of which their entertainer, glancing at his daughter, remarked
that she had grown.
"Yes, but I think she has finished. She'll remain--not big," said
the French sister.
"I'm not sorry. I prefer women like books--very good and not too
long. But I know," the gentleman said, "no particular reason why
my child should be short."
The nun gave a temperate shrug, as if to intimate that such
things might be beyond our knowledge. "She's in very good health;
that's the best thing."
"Yes, she looks sound." And the young girl's father watched her a
moment. "What do you see in the garden?" he asked in French.
"I see many flowers," she replied in a sweet, small voice and
with an accent as good as his own.
"Yes, but not many good ones. However, such as they are, go out
and gather some for ces dames."
The child turned to him with her smile heightened by pleasure.
"May I, truly?"
"Ah, when I tell you," said her father.
The girl glanced at the elder of the nuns. "May I, truly, ma
mere?"
"Obey monsieur your father, my child," said the sister, blushing
again.
The child, satisfied with this authorisation, descended from the
threshold and was presently lost to sight. "You don't spoil
them," said her father gaily.
"For everything they must ask leave. That's our system. Leave is
freely granted, but they must ask it."
"Oh, I don't quarrel with your system; I've no doubt it's
excellent. I sent you my daughter to see what you'd make of her.
I had faith."
"One must have faith," the sister blandly rejoined, gazing
through her spectacles.
"Well, has my faith been rewarded What have you made of her?"
The sister dropped her eyes a moment. "A good Christian,
monsieur."
Her host dropped his eyes as well; but it was probable that the
movement had in each case a different spring. "Yes, and what
else?"
He watched the lady from the convent, probably thinking she would
say that a good Christian was everything; but for all her
simplicity she was not so crude as that. "A charming young lady
--a real little woman--a daughter in whom you will have nothing
but contentment."
"She seems to me very gentille," said the father. "She's really
pretty."
"She's perfect. She has no faults."
"She never had any as a child, and I'm glad you have given her
none."
"We love her too much," said the spectacled sister with dignity.
"And as for faults, how can we give what we have not? Le couvent
n'est pas comme le monde, monsieur. She's our daughter, as you
may say. We've had her since she was so small."
"Of all those we shall lose this year she's the one we shall miss
most," the younger woman murmured deferentially.
"Ah, yes, we shall talk long of her," said the other. "We shall
hold her up to the new ones." And at this the good sister
appeared to find her spectacles dim; while her companion, after
fumbling a moment, presently drew forth a pocket-handkerchief of
durable texture.
"It's not certain you'll lose her; nothing's settled yet," their
host rejoined quickly; not as if to anticipate their tears, but
in the tone of a man saying what was most agreeable to himself.
"We should be very happy to believe that. Fifteen is very young
to leave us."
"Oh," exclaimed the gentleman with more vivacity than he had yet
used, "it is not I who wish to take her away. I wish you could
keep her always!"
"Ah, monsieur," said the elder sister, smiling and getting up,
"good as she is, she's made for the world. Le monde y gagnera."
"If all the good people were hidden away in convents how would
the world get on?" her companion softly enquired, rising also.
This was a question of a wider bearing than the good woman
apparently supposed; and the lady in spectacles took a
harmonising view by saying comfortably: "Fortunately there are
good people everywhere."
"If you're going there will be two less here," her host remarked
gallantly.
For this extravagant sally his simple visitors had no answer, and
they simply looked at each other in decent deprecation; but their
confusion was speedily covered by the return of the young girl
with two large bunches of roses--one of them all white, the other
red.
"I give you your choice, mamman Catherine," said the child.
"It's only the colour that's different, mamman Justine; there are
just as many roses in one bunch as in the other."
The two sisters turned to each other, smiling and hesitating,
with "Which will you take?" and "No, it's for you to choose."
"I'll take the red, thank you," said Catherine in the spectacles.
"I'm so red myself. They'll comfort us on our way back to Rome."
"Ah, they won't last," cried the young girl. I wish I could give
you something that would last!"
"You've given us a good memory of yourself, my daughter. That
will last!"
"I wish nuns could wear pretty things. I would give you my blue
beads," the child went on.
"And do you go back to Rome to-night?" her father enquired.
"Yes, we take the train again. We've so much to do la-bas."
"Are you not tired?"
"We are never tired."
"Ah, my sister, sometimes," murmured the junior votaress.
"Not to-day, at any rate. We have rested too well here. Que Dieu
vows garde, ma fine."
Their host, while they exchanged kisses with his daughter, went
forward to open the door through which they were to pass; but as
he did so he gave a slight exclamation, and stood looking beyond.
The door opened into a vaulted ante-chamber, as high as a chapel
and paved with red tiles; and into this antechamber a lady had
just been admitted by a servant, a lad in shabby livery, who was
now ushering her toward the apartment in which our friends were
grouped. The gentleman at the door, after dropping his
exclamation, remained silent; in silence too the lady advanced.
He gave her no further audible greeting and offered her no hand,
but stood aside to let her pass into the saloon. At the threshold
she hesitated. "Is there any one?" she asked.
"Some one you may see."
She went in and found herself confronted with the two nuns and
their pupil, who was coming forward, between them, with a hand in
the arm of each. At the sight of the new visitor they all paused,
and the lady, who had also stopped, stood looking at them. The
young girl gave a little soft cry: "Ah, Madame Merle!"
The visitor had been slightly startled, but her manner the next
instant was none the less gracious. "Yes, it's Madame Merle, come
to welcome you home." And she held out two hands to the girl, who
immediately came up to her, presenting her forehead to be kissed.
Madame Merle saluted this 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 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.
"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.
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.
"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!"
"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 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 would find unprepared. "Do you wish to
know why? Because I've spoken of you to her."
Osmond frowned and turned away. "I'd rather not know that." Then
in a moment he pointed out the easel supporting the little
water-colour drawing. "Have you seen what's there--my last?"
Madame Merle drew near and considered. "Is it the Venetian
Alps--one of your last year's sketches?"
"Yes--but how you guess everything!"
She looked a moment longer, then turned away. "You know I
don't care for your drawings."
"I know it, yet I'm always surprised at it. They're really so much
better than most people's."
"That may very well be. But as the only thing you do--well, it's
so little. I should have liked you to do so many other things:
those were my ambitions."
"Yes; you've told me many times--things that were impossible."
"Things that were impossible," said Madame Merle. And then in
quite a different tone: "In itself your little picture's very
good." She looked about the room--at the old cabinets, pictures,
tapestries, surfaces of faded silk. "Your rooms at least are
perfect. I'm struck with that afresh whenever I come back; I know
none better anywhere. You understand this sort of thing as nobody
anywhere does. You've such adorable taste."
"I'm sick of my adorable taste," said Gilbert Osmond.
"You must nevertheless let Miss Archer come and see it. I've told
her about it."
"I don't object to showing my things--when people are not
idiots."
"You do it delightfully. As cicerone of your museum you appear to
particular advantage."
Mr. Osmond, in return for this compliment, simply looked at once
colder and more attentive. "Did you say she was rich?"
"She has seventy thousand pounds."
"En ecus bien comptes?"
"There's no doubt whatever about her fortune. I've seen it, as I
may say."
"Satisfactory woman!--I mean you. And if I go to see her shall I
see the mother?"
"The mother? She has none--nor father either."
"The aunt then--whom did you say?--Mrs. Touchett. I can easily
keep her out of the way."
"I don't object to her," said Osmond; "I rather like Mrs.
Touchett. She has a sort of old-fashioned character that's
passing away--a vivid identity. But that long jackanapes the
son--is he about the place?"
"He's there, but he won't trouble you."
"He's a good deal of a donkey."
"I think you're mistaken. He's a very clever man. But he's not
fond of being about when I'm there, because he doesn't like me."
"What could he be more asinine than that? Did you say she has
looks?" Osmond went on.
"Yes; but I won't say it again, lest you should be disappointed
in them. Come and make a beginning; that's all I ask of you."
"A beginning of what?"
Madame Merle was silent a little. "I want you of course to marry
her."
"The beginning of the end? Well, I'll see for myself. Have you
told her that?"
"For what do you take me? She's not so coarse a piece of
machinery--nor am I."
"Really," said Osmond after some meditation, "I don't understand
your ambitions."
"I think you'll understand this one after you've seen Miss
Archer. Suspend your judgement." Madame Merle, as she spoke, had
drawn near the open door of the garden, where she stood a moment
looking out. "Pansy has really grown pretty," she presently
added.
"So it seemed to me."
"But she has had enough of the convent."
"I don't know," said Osmond. "I like what they've made of her.
It's very charming."
"That's not the convent. It's the child's nature."
"It's the combination, I think. She's as pure as a pearl."
"Why doesn't she come back with my flowers then?" Madame Merle
asked. "She's not in a hurry."
"We'll go and get them."
"She doesn't like me," the visitor murmured as she raised her
parasol and they passed into the garden. _
Read next: VOLUME I: CHAPTER XXIII
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