feeling that you are running a risk."

"Marriage is always a risk, and his risk is as great as mine.'

"That's his affair! If he is afraid, let him recede; I wish he would."

Isabel leaned back in her chair, folded her arms, and gazed a while at her cousin.

"I don't think I understand you," she said at last, coldly. "I don't know what you are talking about."

"I thought you would marry a man of more importance."

Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a flame leaped into her face.

"Of more importance to whom? It seems to me enough that one's husband should be important to one's self!"

Ralph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physically speaking, he proceeded to change it; he straightened himself, then leaned forward, resting a hand on each knee. He fixed his eyes on the ground; he had an air of the most respectful deliberation.

"I will tell you in a moment what I mean," he presently said. He felt agitated, intensely eager; now that he had opened the discussion he wished to discharge his mind. But he wished also to be superlatively gentle.

Isabel waited a little, and then she went on, with majesty.

"In everything that makes real distinction Mr. Osmond is pre-eminent. There may be nobler natures, but I have never had the pleasure of meeting one. Mr. Osmond is the best I know; he is important enough for me."

"I had a sort of vision of your future," Ralph said, without answering this "I amused myself with planning out a kind of destiny for you. There was to be nothing of this sort in it. You were not to come down so easily, so soon.

"To come down? What strange expressions you use! Is that your description of my marriage?"

"It expresses my idea of it. You seemed to me to be soaring far up in

Sud

the blue-to be sailing in the bright light, over the heads of men. denly some one tosses up a stone-a missile that should never have reached you and down you drop to the ground. It hurts me," said Ralph, audaciously, "as if I had fallen myself!"

The look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his companion's face.

"I don't understand you in the least," she repeated. "You say you amused yourself with planning out my future I don't understand that. Don't amuse yourself too much, or I shall think you are doing it at my expense." Ralph shook his head.

"I am not afraid of your not believing that I have had great ideas for you."

"What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?" the girl asked. "I have never moved on a higher line than I am moving on now. There is nothing higher for a girl than to marry a-a person she likes," said poor Isabel, wandering into the didactic.

"It's your liking the person we speak of that I venture to criticise, my dear Isabel! I should have said that the man for you would have been a more active, larger, freer sort of nature." Ralph hesitated a moment, then he added, "I can't get over the belief that there's something small in Osmond."

He had uttered these last words with a tremor of the voice; he was afraid that she would flash out again. But to his surprise he was quiet; she had the air of considering.

"Something small?" she said reflectively.

"I think he's narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!"

"He has a great respect for himself; I don't blame him for that," said Isabel. "It's the proper way to respect others."

Ralph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone.

"Yes, but everything is relative; one ought to feel one's relations. I don't think Mr. Osmond does that."

"I have chiefly to do with the relation in which he stands to me. In that he is excellent."

"He is the incarnation of taste," Ralph went on, thinking hard how he could best express Gilbert Osmond's sinister attributes without putting himself in the wrong by seeming to describe him coarsely. He wished to describe him impersonally, scientifically. "He judges and measures, approves and condemns, altogether by that."

"It is a happy thing then that his taste should be exquisite."

"It is exquisite indeed, since it has led him to select you as his wife. But have you ever seen an exquisite taste ruffled?"

"I hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify my husband's."

At these words a sudden passion leaped to Ralph's lips. "Ah, that's wilful, that's unworthy of you!" he cried. "You were not meant to be measured in that way-you were meant for something better than to keep guard over the sensibilities of a sterile dilettante!"

Isabel rose quickly and Ralph did the same, so that they stood for a moment looking at each other as if he had flung down a defiance or insult.

an

"You go too far," she murmured. "I have said what I had on my mind-and I have said it because I love you!"

Isabel turned pale was he too on that tiresome list? She had a sudden wish to strike him off. “Ah then, you are not disinterested!"

"I love you, but I love without hope," said Ralph, quickly, forcing a smile, and feeling that in that last declaration he had expressed more than he intended.

Isabel moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness of the garden; but after a little she turned back to him. "I am afraid your talk, then, is the wildness of despair. I don't understand it but it doesn't matter. I am not arguing with you; it is impossible that I should; I have

"I

He

only tried to listen to you. I am much obliged to you for attempting to explain," she said gently, as if the anger with which she had just sprung had already subsided. "It is very up good of you to try to warn me, if you are really alarmed. But I won't promise to think of what you have said; I shall forget it as soon as possible. Try and forget it yourself; you have done your duty, and no man can do more I can't explain to you what I feel, what I believe, and I wouldn't if I could." She paused a moment, and then she went on, with an inconsequence that Ralph observed even in the midst of his eagerness to discover some symptom of concession. can't enter into your idea of Mr. Osmond; I can't do it justice, because I see him in quite another way. is not important-no, he is not important; he is a man to whom importance is supremely indifferent. If that is what you mean when you call him 'small,' then he is as small as you please. I call that large-it's the largest thing I know. I won't pretend to argue with you about a person I am going to marry," Isabel repeated. "I am not in the least concerned to defend Mr. Osmond; he is not so weak as to need my defence. I should think it would seem strange, even to yourself, that I should talk of him so quietly and coldly, as if he were any one else. I would not talk of him at all, to any one but you; and you, after what you have said-I may just answer you once for all. Pray, would you wish me to make a mercenary marriage what they call a marriage of ambition? I have only one ambition -to be free to follow out a good feeling. I had others once; but they have passed away. Do you complain of Mr. Osmond because he is not rich? That is just what I like him for. I have fortunately money enough; I have never felt so thankful for it as There have been moments when I should like to go and kneel down by your father's grave; he did perhaps a better thing than he knew

when he put it into my power to marry a poor man-a man who has borne his poverty with such dignity, with such indifference. Mr. Osmond has never scrambled nor struggled he has cared for no worldly prize. If that is to be narrow, if that is to be selfish, then it's very well. I am not frightened by such words, I am not even displeased; I am only sorry that you should make a mistake. Others might have done so, but I am surprised that you should. You might know a gentleman when you see one-you might know a fine mind. Mr. Osmond makes no mistakes! He knows everything, he understands everything, he has the kindest, gentlest, highest spirit. You have got hold of some false idea; it's a pity, but I can't help it; it regards you more than me." Isabel paused a moment, looking at her cousin with an eye illuminated by a sentiment which contradicted the careful calmness of her manner-a mingled sentiment, to which the angry pain excited by his words and the wounded pride of having needed to justify a choice of which she felt only the nobleness and purity, equally contributed. Though she paused, Ralph said nothing; he saw she had more to say. She was superb, but she was eager; she was indifferent, but she was secretly trembling. What sort of a person should you have liked me to marry?" she asked, suddenly. "You talk about one's soaring and sailing, but if one marries at all one touches the earth. One has human feelings and needs, one has a heart in one's bosom, and one must marry a particular individual. Your mother has never forgiven me for not having come to a better understanding with Lord Warburton, and she is horrified at my contenting myself with a person who has none of Lord Warburton's great advantages-no property, no title, no honours, no houses, nor lands, nor position, nor reputation, nor brilliant belongings of any sort. It is the total absence of all these things that

66

pleases me. Mr. Osmond is simply a man- he is not a proprietor!

Ralph had listened with great attention, as if everything she said merited deep consideration; but in reality he was only half thinking of the things she said, he was for the rest simply accommodating himself to the weight of his total impression-the impression of her passionate good faith. She was wrong, but she believed; she was deluded, but she was consistent. It was wonderfully characteristic of her that she had invented a fine theory about Gilbert Osmond, and loved him, not for what he really possessed, but for his very poverties dressed out as honours. Ralph remembered what he had said to his father about wishing to put it into Isabel's power to gratify her imagination. He had done so, and the girl had taken full advantage of the privilege. Poor Ralph felt sick; he felt ashamed. Isabel had uttered her last words with a low solemnity of conviction which virtually terminated the discussion, and she closed it formally by turning away and walking back to the house. Ralph walked beside her, and they passed into the court together and reached the big staircase. Here Ralph stopped, and Isabel paused, turning on him a face full of a deep elation at his opposition having made her own conception of her conduct more clear to her.

"Shall you not come up to breakfast?" she asked.

"No; I want no breakfast, I am not hungry."

"You ought to eat," said the girl; "you live on air."

"I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and take another mouthful of it. I came thus far simply to say this. I said to you last year that if you were to get into trouble I should feel terribly sold. That's how I feel to-day."

"Do you think I am in trouble? "One is in trouble when one is in error."

"Very well," said Isabel; "I shall

never complain of my trouble to you!" And she moved up the staircase.

Ralph, standing there with his hands in his pockets, followed her with his eyes; then the lurking chill of the high-walled court struck him and made him shiver, so that he returned to the garden, to breakfast on the Florentine sunshine..

XXXIV.

ISABEL, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt no impulse to tell him that he was not thought well of at the Palazzo Crescentini. The discreet opposition offered to her marriage by her aunt and her cousin made on the whole little impression upon her; the moral of it was simply that they disliked Gilbert Osmond. This dislike was not alarming to Isabel; she scarcely even regretted it; for it served mainly to throw into higher relief the fact, in every way so honourable, that she married to please herself. One did other things to please other people; one did this for a more personal satisfaction; and Isabel's satisfaction was assured 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 fulfil ment of his hopes, the harsh criticism passed upon him by Ralph Touchett. The chief impression produced upon Isabel's mind 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 dutiful hope that she would be happy, and a surprise, somewhat more vague, at her not having chosen a consort of whom a richer portrait could be painted; 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 Good

wood, who perhaps would not; from her aunt, who had cold, shallow ideas about marriage, for which she was not sorry to manifest 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 thought on the whole but little about it, and accepted as an incident 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 feel that there was after all something very invidious in being in love; much as the sentiment was theoretically approved of. It was the tragical side of happiness; one's right was always made of the wrong of some one else. Gilbert Osmond was not demonstrative; the consciousness of success, which must now have flamed high within him, emitted very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze. Contentment, on his part, never took a vulgar form; excitement, in the most self-conscious of men, was a kind of ecstasy of selfcontrol. This disposition, however, made him an admirable lover; it gave him a constant view of the amorous character. He never forgot himself, as I say; and so he never forgot to be graceful and tender, to wear the appearance of devoted intention. 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