should be curious of so rare an apparition. So when his mother observed to him that it was plain what Mr. Osmond was thinking of, Ralph replied that he was quite of her opinion. Mrs. Touchett had from far back found a place on her scant list for this gentleman, though wondering dimly by what art and what process — so negative and so wise as they were — he had everywhere effectively imposed himself. As he had never been an importunate visitor he had had no chance to be offensive, and he was recommended to her by his appearance of being as well able to do without her as she was to do without him — a quality that always, oddly enough, affected her as providing ground for a relation with her. It gave her no satisfaction, however, to think that he had taken it into his head to marry her niece. Such an alliance, on Isabel’s part, would have an air of almost morbid perversity. Mrs. Touchett easily remembered that the girl had refused an English peer; and that a young lady with whom Lord Warburton had not successfully wrestled should content herself with an obscure American dilettante, a middle-aged widower with an uncanny child and an ambiguous income, this answered to nothing in Mrs. Touchett’s conception of success. She took, it will be observed, not the sentimental, but the political, view of matrimony — a view which has always had much to recommend it. “I trust she won’t have the folly to listen to him,” she said to her son; to which Ralph replied that Isabel’s listening was one thing and Isabel’s answering quite another. He knew she had listened to several parties, as his father would have said, but had made them listen in return; and he found much entertainment in the idea that in these few months of his knowing her he should observe a fresh suitor at her gate. She had wanted to see life, and fortune was serving her to her taste; a succession of fine gentlemen going down on their knees to her would do as well as anything else. Ralph looked forward to a fourth, a fifth, a tenth besieger; he had no conviction she would stop at a third. She would keep the gate ajar and open a parley; she would certainly not allow number three to come in. He expressed this view, somewhat after this fashion, to his mother, who looked at him as if he had been dancing a jig. He had such a fanciful, pictorial way of saying things that he might as well address her in the deaf-mute’s alphabet.
“I don’t think I know what you mean,” she said; “you use too many figures of speech; I could never understand allegories. The two words in the language I most respect are Yes and No. If Isabel wants to marry Mr. Osmond she’ll do so in spite of all your comparisons. Let her alone to find a fine one herself for anything she undertakes. I know very little about the young man in America; I don’t think she spends much of her time in thinking of him, and I suspect he has got tired of waiting for her. There’s nothing in life to prevent her marrying Mr. Osmond if she only looks at him in a certain way. That’s all very well; no one approves more than I of one’s pleasing one’s self. But she takes her pleasure in such odd things; she’s capable of marrying Mr. Osmond for the beauty of his opinions or for his autograph of Michael Angelo. She wants to be disinterested: as if she were the only person who’s in danger of not being so! Will HE be so disinterested when he has the spending of her money? That was her idea before your father’s death, and it has acquired new charms for her since. She ought to marry some one of whose disinterestedness she shall herself be sure; and there would be no such proof of that as his having a fortune of his own.”
“My dear mother, I’m not afraid,” Ralph answered. “She’s making fools of us all. She’ll please herself, of course; but she’ll do so by studying human nature at close quarters and yet retaining her liberty. She has started on an exploring expedition, and I don’t think she’ll change her course, at the outset, at a signal from Gilbert Osmond. She may have slackened speed for an hour, but before we know it she’ll be steaming away again. Excuse another metaphor.”
Mrs. Touchett excused it perhaps, but was not so much reassured as to withhold from Madame Merle the expression of her fears. “You who know everything,” she said, “you must know this: whether that curious creature’s really making love to my niece.”
“Gilbert Osmond?” Madame Merle widened her clear eyes and, with a full intelligence, “Heaven help us,” she exclaimed, “that’s an idea!”
“Hadn’t it occurred to you?”
“You make me feel an idiot, but I confess it hadn’t. I wonder,” she added, “if it has occurred to Isabel.”
“Oh, I shall now ask her,” said Mrs. Touchett.
Madame Merle reflected. “Don’t put it into her head. The thing would be to ask Mr. Osmond.”
“I can’t do that,” said Mrs. Touchett. “I won’t have him enquire of me — as he perfectly may with that air of his, given Isabel’s situation — what business it is of mine.”
“I’ll ask him myself,” Madame Merle bravely declared.
“But what business — for HIM— is it of yours?”
“It’s being none whatever is just why I can afford to speak. It’s so much less my business than any one’s else that he can put me off with anything he chooses. But it will be by the way he does this that I shall know.”
“Pray let me hear then,” said Mrs. Touchett, “of the fruits of your penetration. If I can’t speak to him, however, at least I can speak to Isabel.”
Her companion sounded at this the note of warning. “Don’t be too quick with her. Don’t inflame her imagination.”
“I never did anything in life to any one’s imagination. But I’m always sure of her doing something — well, not of MY kind.”
“No, you wouldn’t like this,” Madame Merle observed without the point of interrogation.
“Why in the world should I, pray? Mr. Osmond has nothing the least solid to offer.”
Again Madame Merle was silent while her thoughtful smile drew up her mouth even more charmingly than usual toward the left corner. “Let us distinguish. Gilbert Osmond’s certainly not the first comer. He’s a man who in favourable conditions might very well make a great impression. He has made a great impression, to my knowledge, more than once.”
“Don’t tell me about his probably quite cold-blooded love-affairs; they’re nothing to me!” Mrs. Touchett cried. “What you say’s precisely why I wish he would cease his visits. He has nothing in the world that I know of but a dozen or two of early masters and a more or less pert little daughter.”
“The early masters are now worth a good deal of money,” said Madame Merle, “and the daughter’s a very young and very innocent and very harmless person.”
“In other words she’s an insipid little chit. Is that what you mean? Having no fortune she can’t hope to marry as they marry here; so that Isabel will have to furnish her either with a maintenance or with a dowry.”
“Isabel probably wouldn’t object to being kind to her. I think she likes the poor child.”
“Another reason then for Mr. Osmond’s stopping at home! Otherwise, a week hence, we shall have my niece arriving at the conviction that her mission in life’s to prove that a stepmother may sacrifice herself — and that, to prove it, she must first become one.”
“She would make a charming stepmother,” smiled Madame Merle; “but I quite agree with you that she had better not decide upon her mission too hastily. Changing the form of one’s mission’s almost as difficult as changing the shape of one’s nose: there they are, each, in the middle of one’s face and one’s character — one has to begin too far back. But I’ll investigate and report to you.”
All this went on quite over Isabel’s head; she had no suspicions that
