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_ It would certainly have been hard to see what injury could arise
to her from the visit she presently paid to Mr. Osmond's
hill-top. Nothing could have been more charming than this
occasion--a soft afternoon in the full maturity of the Tuscan
spring. The companions drove out of the Roman Gate, beneath the
enormous blank superstructure which crowns the fine clear arch of
that portal and makes it nakedly impressive, and wound between
high-walled lanes into which the wealth of blossoming orchards
over-drooped and flung a fragrance, until they reached the small
superurban piazza, of crooked shape, where the long brown wall
of the villa occupied in part by Mr. Osmond formed a principal,
or at least a very imposing, object. Isabel went with her friend
through a wide, high court, where a clear shadow rested below and
a pair of light-arched galleries, facing each other above, caught
the upper sunshine upon their slim columns and the flowering
plants in which they were dressed. There was something grave and
strong in the place; it looked somehow as if, once you were in,
you would need an act of energy to get out. For Isabel, however,
there was of course as yet no thought of getting out, but only of
advancing. Mr. Osmond met her in the cold ante-chamber--it was
cold even in the month of May--and ushered her, with her
conductress, into the apartment to which we have already been
introduced. Madame Merle was in front, and while Isabel lingered
a little, talking with him, she went forward familiarly and
greeted two persons who were seated in the saloon. One of these
was little Pansy, on whom she bestowed a kiss; the other was a
lady whom Mr. Osmond indicated to Isabel as his sister, the
Countess Gemini. "And that's my little girl," he said, "who has
just come out of her convent."
Pansy had on a scant white dress, and her fair hair was neatly
arranged in a net; she wore her small shoes tied sandal-fashion
about her ankles. She made Isabel a little conventual curtsey
and then came to be kissed. The Countess Gemini simply nodded
without getting up: Isabel could see she was a woman of high
fashion. She was thin and dark and not at all pretty, having
features that suggested some tropical bird--a long beak-like nose,
small, quickly-moving eyes and a mouth and chin that receded
extremely. Her expression, however, thanks to various intensities
of emphasis and wonder, of horror and joy, was not inhuman, and,
as regards her appearance, it was plain she understood herself
and made the most of her points. Her attire, voluminous and
delicate, bristling with elegance, had the look of shimmering
plumage, and her attitudes were as light and sudden as those of a
creature who perched upon twigs. She had a great deal of manner;
Isabel, who had never known any one with so much manner,
immediately classed her as the most affected of women. She
remembered that Ralph had not recommended her as an acquaintance;
but she was ready to acknowledge that to a casual view the
Countess Gemini revealed no depths. Her demonstrations suggested
the violent waving of some flag of general truce--white silk with
fluttering streamers.
"You'll believe I'm glad to see you when I tell you it's only
because I knew you were to be here that I came myself. I don't
come and see my brother--I make him come and see me. This hill of
his is impossible--I don't see what possesses him. Really,
Osmond, you'll be the ruin of my horses some day, and if it hurts
them you'll have to give me another pair. I heard them wheezing
to-day; I assure you I did. It's very disagreeable to hear one's
horses wheezing when one's sitting in the carriage; it sounds too
as if they weren't what they should be. But I've always had good
horses; whatever else I may have lacked I've always managed that.
My husband doesn't know much, but I think he knows a horse. In
general Italians don't, but my husband goes in, according to his
poor light, for everything English. My horses are English--so
it's all the greater pity they should be ruined. I must tell
you," she went on, directly addressing Isabel, "that Osmond
doesn't often invite me; I don't think he likes to have me. It
was quite my own idea, coming to-day. I like to see new people,
and I'm sure you're very new. But don't sit there; that chair's
not what it looks. There are some very good seats here, but there
are also some horrors."
These remarks were delivered with a series of little jerks and
pecks, of roulades of shrillness, and in an accent that was as
some fond recall of good English, or rather of good American, in
adversity.
"I don't like to have you, my dear?" said her brother. "I'm sure
you're invaluable."
"I don't see any horrors anywhere," Isabel returned, looking
about her. "Everything seems to me beautiful and precious."
"I've a few good things," Mr. Osmond allowed; "indeed I've
nothing very bad. But I've not what I should have liked."
He stood there a little awkwardly, smiling and glancing about;
his manner was an odd mixture of the detached and the involved.
He seemed to hint that nothing but the right "values" was of any
consequence. Isabel made a rapid induction: perfect simplicity
was not the badge of his family. Even the little girl from the
convent, who, in her prim white dress, with her small submissive
face and her hands locked before her, stood there as if she were
about to partake of her first communion, even Mr. Osmond's
diminutive daughter had a kind of finish that was not entirely
artless.
"You'd have liked a few things from the Uffzi and the Pitti--
that's what you'd have liked," said Madame Merle.
"Poor Osmond, with his old curtains and crucifixes!" the Countess
Gemini exclaimed: she appeared to call her brother only by his
family-name. Her ejaculation had no particular object; she smiled
at Isabel as she made it and looked at her from head to foot.
Her brother had not heard her; he seemed to be thinking what he
could say to Isabel. "Won't you have some tea?--you must be very
tired," he at last bethought himself of remarking.
"No indeed, I'm not tired; what have I done to tire me?" Isabel
felt a certain need of being very direct, of pretending to
nothing; there was something in the air, in her general impression
of things--she could hardly have said what it was--that deprived
her of all disposition to put herself forward. The place, the
occasion, the combination of people, signified more than lay on
the surface; she would try to understand--she would not simply
utter graceful platitudes. Poor Isabel was doubtless not aware
that many women would have uttered graceful platitudes to cover
the working of their observation. It must be confessed that her
pride was a trifle alarmed. A man she had heard spoken of in
terms that excited interest and who was evidently capable of
distinguishing himself, had invited her, a young lady not lavish
of her favours, to come to his house. Now that she had done so
the burden of the entertainment rested naturally on his wit.
Isabel was not rendered less observant, and for the moment,
we judge, she was not rendered more indulgent, by perceiving that
Mr. Osmond carried his burden less complacently than might have
been expected. "What a fool I was to have let myself so
needlessly in--!" she could fancy his exclaiming to himself.
"You'll be tired when you go home, if he shows you all his
bibelots and gives you a lecture on each," said the Countess
Gemini.
"I'm not afraid of that; but if I'm tired I shall at least have
learned something."
"Very little, I suspect. But my sister's dreadfully afraid of
learning anything," said Mr. Osmond.
"Oh, I confess to that; I don't want to know anything more--I
know too much already. The more you know the more unhappy you
are."
"You should not undervalue knowledge before Pansy, who has not
finished her education," Madame Merle interposed with a smile.
"Pansy will never know any harm," said the child's father.
"Pansy's a little convent-flower."
"Oh, the convents, the convents!" cried the Countess with a
flutter of her ruffles. "Speak to me of the convents! You may
learn anything there; I'm a convent-flower myself. I don't
pretend to be good, but the nuns do. Don't you see what I mean?"
she went on, appealing to Isabel.
Isabel was not sure she saw, and she answered that she was very
bad at following arguments. The Countess then declared that she
herself detested arguments, but that this was her brother's taste
--he would always discuss. "For me," she said, "one should like a
thing or one shouldn't; one can't like everything, of course. But
one shouldn't attempt to reason it out--you never know where it
may lead you. There are some very good feelings that may have bad
reasons, don't you know? And then there are very bad feelings,
sometimes, that have good reasons. Don't you see what I mean? I
don't care anything about reasons, but I know what I like."
"Ah, that's the great thing," said Isabel, smiling and suspecting
that her acquaintance with this lightly flitting personage would
not lead to intellectual repose. If the Countess objected to
argument Isabel at this moment had as little taste for it, and
she put out her hand to Pansy with a pleasant sense that such a
gesture committed her to nothing that would admit of a divergence
of views. Gilbert Osmond apparently took a rather hopeless view
of his sister's tone; he turned the conversation to another
topic. He presently sat down on the other side of his daughter,
who had shyly brushed Isabel's fingers with her own; but he ended
by drawing her out of her chair and making her stand between his
knees, leaning against him while he passed his arm round her
slimness. The child fixed her eyes on Isabel with a still,
disinterested gaze which seemed void of an intention, yet
conscious of an attraction. Mr. Osmond talked of many things;
Madame Merle had said he could be agreeable when he chose, and
to-day, after a little, he appeared not only to have chosen but
to have determined. Madame Merle and the Countess Gemini sat a
little apart, conversing in the effortless manner of persons who
knew each other well enough to take their ease; but every now and
then Isabel heard the Countess, at something said by her
companion, plunge into the latter's lucidity as a poodle splashes
after a thrown stick. It was as if Madame Merle were seeing how
far she would go. Mr. Osmond talked of Florence, of Italy, of the
pleasure of living in that country and of the abatements to the
pleasure. There were both satisfactions and drawbacks; the
drawbacks were numerous; strangers were too apt to see such a
world as all romantic. It met the case soothingly for the human,
for the social failure--by which he meant the people who couldn't
"realise," as they said, on their sensibility: they could keep it
about them there, in their poverty, without ridicule, as you
might keep an heirloom or an inconvenient entailed place that
brought you in nothing. Thus there were advantages in living in
the country which contained the greatest sum of beauty. Certain
impressions you could get only there. Others, favourable to life,
you never got, and you got some that were very bad. But from time
to time you got one of a quality that made up for everything.
Italy, all the same, had spoiled a great many people; he was even
fatuous enough to believe at times that he himself might have
been a better man if he had spent less of his life there. It made
one idle and dilettantish and second-rate; it had no discipline
for the character, didn't cultivate in you, otherwise expressed,
the successful social and other "cheek" that flourished in Paris
and London. "We're sweetly provincial," said Mr. Osmond, "and I'm
perfectly aware that I myself am as rusty as a key that has no
lock to fit it. It polishes me up a little to talk with you--not
that I venture to pretend I can turn that very complicated lock I
suspect your intellect of being! But you'll be going away before
I've seen you three times, and I shall perhaps never see you
after that. That's what it is to live in a country that people
come to. When they're disagreeable here it's bad enough; when
they're agreeable it's still worse. As soon as you like them
they're off again! I've been deceived too often; I've ceased to
form attachments, to permit myself to feel attractions. You mean
to stay--to settle? That would be really comfortable. Ah yes, your
aunt's a sort of guarantee; I believe she may be depended on. Oh,
she's an old Florentine; I mean literally an old one; not a
modern outsider. She's a contemporary of the Medici; she must
have been present at the burning of Savonarola, and I'm not sure
she didn't throw a handful of chips into the flame. Her face is
very much like some faces in the early pictures; little, dry,
definite faces that must have had a good deal of expression, but
almost always the same one. Indeed I can show you her portrait in
a fresco of Ghirlandaio's. I hope you don't object to my speaking
that way of your aunt, eh? I've an idea you don't. Perhaps you
think that's even worse. I assure you there's no want of respect
in it, to either of you. You know I'm a particular admirer of
Mrs. Touchett."
While Isabel's host exerted himself to entertain her in this
somewhat confidential fashion she looked occasionally at Madame
Merle, who met her eyes with an inattentive smile in which, on
this occasion, there was no infelicitous intimation that our
heroine appeared to advantage. Madame Merle eventually proposed
to the Countess Gemini that they should go into the garden, and
the Countess, rising and shaking out her feathers, began to
rustle toward the door. "Poor Miss Archer!" she exclaimed,
surveying the other group with expressive compassion. "She has
been brought quite into the family."
"Miss Archer can certainly have nothing but sympathy for a family
to which you belong," Mr. Osmond answered, with a laugh which,
though it had something of a mocking ring, had also a finer
patience.
"I don't know what you mean by that! I'm sure she'll see no harm
in me but what you tell her. I'm better than he says, Miss
Archer," the Countess went on. "I'm only rather an idiot and a
bore. Is that all he has said? Ah then, you keep him in
good-humour. Has he opened on one of his favourite subjects? I
give you notice that there are two or three that he treats a
fond. In that case you had better take off your bonnet."
"I don't think I know what Mr. Osmond's favourite subjects are,"
said Isabel, who had risen to her feet.
The Countess assumed for an instant an attitude of intense
meditation, pressing one of her hands, with the finger-tips
gathered together, to her forehead. "I'll tell you in a moment.
One's Machiavelli; the other's Vittoria Colonna; the next is
Metastasio."
"Ah, with me," said Madame Merle, passing her arm into the
Countess Gemini's as if to guide her course to the garden, "Mr.
Osmond's never so historical."
"Oh you," the Countess answered as they moved away, "you yourself
are Machiavelli--you yourself are Vittoria Colonna!"
"We shall hear next that poor Madame Merle is Metastasio!"
Gilbert Osmond resignedly sighed.
Isabel had got up on the assumption that they too were to go into
the garden; but her host stood there with no apparent inclination
to leave the room, his hands in the pockets of his jacket and his
daughter, who had now locked her arm into one of his own,
clinging to him and looking up while her eyes moved from his own
face to Isabel's. Isabel waited, with a certain unuttered
contentedness, to have her movements directed; she liked Mr.
Osmond's talk, his company: she had what always gave her a very
private thrill, the consciousness of a new relation. Through the
open doors of the great room she saw Madame Merle and the
Countess stroll across the fine grass of the garden; then she
turned, and her eyes wandered over the things scattered about
her. The understanding had been that Mr. Osmond should show her
his treasures; his pictures and cabinets all looked like
treasures. Isabel after a moment went toward one of the pictures
to see it better; but just as she had done so he said to her
abruptly: "Miss Archer, what do you think of my sister?"
She faced him with some surprise. "Ah, don't ask me that--I've
seen your sister too little."
"Yes, you've seen her very little; but you must have observed
that there is not a great deal of her to see. What do you think
of our family tone?" he went on with his cool smile. "I should
like to know how it strikes a fresh, unprejudiced mind. I know
what you're going to say--you've had almost no observation of it.
Of course this is only a glimpse. But just take notice, in
future, if you have a chance. I sometimes think we've got into a
rather bad way, living off here among things and people not our
own, without responsibilities or attachments, with nothing to
hold us together or keep us up; marrying foreigners, forming
artificial tastes, playing tricks with our natural mission. Let
me add, though, that I say that much more for myself than for my
sister. She's a very honest lady--more so than she seems. She's
rather unhappy, and as she's not of a serious turn she doesn't
tend to show it tragically: she shows it comically instead. She
has got a horrid husband, though I'm not sure she makes the best
of him. Of course, however, a horrid husband's an awkward thing.
Madame Merle gives her excellent advice, but it's a good deal
like giving a child a dictionary to learn a language with. He can
look out the words, but he can't put them together. My sister
needs a grammar, but unfortunately she's not grammatical. Pardon
my troubling you with these details; my sister was very right in
saying you've been taken into the family. Let me take down that
picture; you want more light."
He took down the picture, carried it toward the window, related
some curious facts about it. She looked at the other works of
art, and he gave her such further information as might appear
most acceptable to a young lady making a call on a summer
afternoon. His pictures, his medallions and tapestries were
interesting; but after a while Isabel felt the owner much more
so, and independently of them, thickly as they seemed to overhang
him. He resembled no one she had ever seen; most of the people
she knew might be divided into groups of half a dozen specimens.
There were one or two exceptions to this; she could think for
instance of no group that would contain her aunt Lydia. There
were other people who were, relatively speaking, original--
original, as one might say, by courtesy such as Mr. Goodwood, as
her cousin Ralph, as Henrietta Stackpole, as Lord Warburton, as
Madame Merle. But in essentials, when one came to look at them,
these individuals belonged to types already present to her mind.
Her mind contained no class offering a natural place to Mr.
Osmond--he was a specimen apart. It was not that she recognised
all these truths at the hour, but they were falling into order
before her. For the moment she only said to herself that this
"new relation" would perhaps prove her very most distinguished.
Madame Merle had had that note of rarity, but what quite other
power it immediately gained when sounded by a man! It was not so
much what he said and did, but rather what he withheld, that
marked him for her as by one of those signs of the highly curious
that he was showing her on the underside of old plates and in the
corner of sixteenth-century drawings: he indulged in no striking
deflections from common usage, he was an original without being
an eccentric. She had never met a person of so fine a grain. The
peculiarity was physical, to begin with, and it extended to
impalpabilities. His dense, delicate hair, his overdrawn,
retouched features, his clear complexion, ripe without being
coarse, the very evenness of the growth of his beard, and that
light, smooth slenderness of structure which made the movement of
a single one of his fingers produce the effect of an expressive
gesture--these personal points struck our sensitive young woman
as signs of quality, of intensity, somehow as promises of
interest. He was certainly fastidious and critical; he was
probably irritable. His sensibility had governed him--possibly
governed him too much; it had made him impatient of vulgar
troubles and had led him to live by himself, in a sorted, sifted,
arranged world, thinking about art and beauty and history. He had
consulted his taste in everything--his taste alone perhaps, as a
sick man consciously incurable consults at last only his lawyer:
that was what made him so different from every one else. Ralph
had something of this same quality, this appearance of thinking
that life was a matter of connoisseurship; but in Ralph it was an
anomaly, a kind of humorous excrescence, whereas in Mr. Osmond it
was the keynote, and everything was in harmony with it. She was
certainly far from understanding him completely; his meaning was
not at all times obvious. It was hard to see what he meant for
instance by speaking of his provincial side--which was exactly
the side she would have taken him most to lack. Was it a harmless
paradox, intended to puzzle her? or was it the last refinement of
high culture? She trusted she should learn in time; it would be
very interesting to learn. If it was provincial to have that
harmony, what then was the finish of the capital? And she could
put this question in spite of so feeling her host a shy
personage; since such shyness as his--the shyness of ticklish
nerves and fine perceptions--was perfectly consistent with the
best breeding. Indeed it was almost a proof of standards and
touchstones other than the vulgar: he must be so sure the vulgar
would be first on the ground. He wasn't a man of easy assurance,
who chatted and gossiped with the fluency of a superficial
nature; he was critical of himself as well as of others, and,
exacting a good deal of others, to think them agreeable, probably
took a rather ironical view of what he himself offered: a proof
into the bargain that he was not grossly conceited. If he had not
been shy he wouldn't have effected that gradual, subtle,
successful conversion of it to which she owed both what pleased
her in him and what mystified her. If he had suddenly asked her
what she thought of the Countess Gemini, that was doubtless a
proof that he was interested in her; it could scarcely be as a
help to knowledge of his own sister. That he should be so
interested showed an enquiring mind; but it was a little singular
he should sacrifice his fraternal feeling to his curiosity. This
was the most eccentric thing he had done.
There were two other rooms, beyond the one in which she had been
received, equally full of romantic objects, and in these
apartments Isabel spent a quarter of an hour. Everything was in
the last degree curious and precious, and Mr. Osmond continued to
be the kindest of ciceroni as he led her from one fine piece to
another and still held his little girl by the hand. His kindness
almost surprised our young friend, who wondered why he should
take so much trouble for her; and she was oppressed at last with
the accumulation of beauty and knowledge to which she found
herself introduced. There was enough for the present; she had
ceased to attend to what he said; she listened to him with
attentive eyes, but was not thinking of what he told her. He
probably thought her quicker, cleverer in every way, more
prepared, than she was. Madame Merle would have pleasantly
exaggerated; which was a pity, because in the end he would be
sure to find out, and then perhaps even her real intelligence
wouldn't reconcile him to his mistake. A part of Isabel's fatigue
came from the effort to appear as intelligent as she believed
Madame Merle had described her, and from the fear (very unusual
with her) of exposing--not her ignorance; for that she cared
comparatively little--but her possible grossness of perception.
It would have annoyed her to express a liking for something he,
in his superior enlightenment, would think she oughtn't to like;
or to pass by something at which the truly initiated mind would
arrest itself. She had no wish to fall into that grotesqueness--
in which she had seen women (and it was a warning) serenely, yet
ignobly, flounder. She was very careful therefore as to what she
said, as to what she noticed or failed to notice; more careful
than she had ever been before.
They came back into the first of the rooms, where the tea had
been served; but as the two other ladies were still on the
terrace, and as Isabel had not yet been made acquainted with the
view, the paramount distinction of the place, Mr. Osmond directed
her steps into the garden without more delay. Madame Merle and
the Countess had had chairs brought out, and as the afternoon was
lovely the Countess proposed they should take their tea in the
open air. Pansy therefore was sent to bid the servant bring out
the preparations. The sun had got low, the golden light took a
deeper tone, and on the mountains and the plain that stretched
beneath them the masses of purple shadow glowed as richly as the
places that were still exposed. The scene had an extraordinary
charm. The air was almost solemnly still, and the large expanse
of the landscape, with its garden-like culture and nobleness of
outline, its teeming valley and delicately-fretted hills, its
peculiarly human-looking touches of habitation, lay there in
splendid harmony and classic grace. "You seem so well pleased
that I think you can be trusted to come back," Osmond said as he
led his companion to one of the angles of the terrace.
"I shall certainly come back," she returned, "in spite of what
you say about its being bad to live in Italy. What was that you
said about one's natural mission? I wonder if I should forsake my
natural mission if I were to settle in Florence."
"A woman's natural mission is to be where she's most
appreciated."
"The point's to find out where that is."
"Very true--she often wastes a great deal of time in the enquiry.
People ought to make it very plain to her."
"Such a matter would have to be made very plain to me," smiled
Isabel.
"I'm glad, at any rate, to hear you talk of settling. Madame
Merle had given me an idea that you were of a rather roving
disposition. I thought she spoke of your having some plan of
going round the world."
"I'm rather ashamed of my plans; I make a new one every day."
"I don't see why you should be ashamed; it's the greatest of
pleasures."
"It seems frivolous, I think," said Isabel. "One ought to choose
something very deliberately, and be faithful to that."
"By that rule then, I've not been frivolous."
"Have you never made plans?"
"Yes, I made one years ago, and I'm acting on it to-day."
"It must have been a very pleasant one," Isabel permitted herself
to observe.
"It was very simple. It was to be as quiet as possible."
"As quiet?" the girl repeated.
"Not to worry--not to strive nor struggle. To resign myself. To
be content with little." He spoke these sentences slowly, with
short pauses between, and his intelligent regard was fixed on his
visitor's with the conscious air of a man who has brought himself
to confess something.
"Do you call that simple?" she asked with mild irony.
"Yes, because it's negative."
"Has your life been negative?"
"Call it affirmative if you like. Only it has affirmed my
indifference. Mind you, not my natural indifference--I HAD none.
But my studied, my wilful renunciation."
She scarcely understood him; it seemed a question whether he were
joking or not. Why should a man who struck her as having a great
fund of reserve suddenly bring himself to be so confidential?
This was his affair, however, and his confidences were interesting.
"I don't see why you should have renounced," she said in a moment.
"Because I could do nothing. I had no prospects, I was poor, and
I was not a man of genius. I had no talents even; I took my
measure early in life. I was simply the most fastidious young
gentleman living. There were two or three people in the world I
envied--the Emperor of Russia, for instance, and the Sultan of
Turkey! There were even moments when I envied the Pope of Rome--
for the consideration he enjoys. I should have been delighted to
be considered to that extent; but since that couldn't be I didn't
care for anything less, and I made up my mind not to go in for
honours. The leanest gentleman can always consider himself, and
fortunately I was, though lean, a gentleman. I could do nothing
in Italy--I couldn't even be an Italian patriot. To do that I
should have had to get out of the country; and I was too fond of
it to leave it, to say nothing of my being too well satisfied
with it, on the whole, as it then was, to wish it altered. So
I've passed a great many years here on that quiet plan I spoke
of. I've not been at all unhappy. I don't mean to say I've cared
for nothing; but the things I've cared for have been definite--
limited. The events of my life have been absolutely unperceived
by any one save myself; getting an old silver crucifix at a
bargain (I've never bought anything dear, of course), or
discovering, as I once did, a sketch by Correggio on a panel
daubed over by some inspired idiot."
This would have been rather a dry account of Mr. Osmond's career
if Isabel had fully believed it; but her imagination supplied the
human element which she was sure had not been wanting. His life
had been mingled with other lives more than he admitted;
naturally she couldn't expect him to enter into this. For the
present she abstained from provoking further revelations; to
intimate that he had not told her everything would be more
familiar and less considerate than she now desired to be--would
in fact be uproariously vulgar. He had certainly told her quite
enough. It was her present inclination, however, to express a
measured sympathy for the success with which he had preserved his
independence. "That's a very pleasant life," she said, "to
renounce everything but Correggio!"
"Oh, I've made in my way a good thing of it. Don't imagine I'm
whining about it. It's one's own fault if one isn't happy."
This was large; she kept down to something smaller. "Have you
lived here always?"
"No, not always. I lived a long time at Naples, and many years in
Rome. But I've been here a good while. Perhaps I shall have to
change, however; to do something else. I've no longer myself to
think of. My daughter's growing up and may very possibly not care
so much for the Correggios and crucifixes as I. I shall have to
do what's best for Pansy."
"Yes, do that," said Isabel. "She's such a dear little girl."
"Ah," cried Gilbert Osmond beautifully, "she's a little saint of
heaven! She is my great happiness!" _
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