Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/160

152 152 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. suppose I ought to love the sea, but I hate it. That's why I don't return to America. I love the land ; the great thing is to love something." Isabel, as a dispassionate witness, had not been struck with the force of Mrs. Touchett's characterisation of her visitor, who had an expressive, communicative, responsive face, by no means of the sort which, to Isabel's mind, suggested a secretive disposi- tion. It was a face that told of a rich nature and of quick and liberal impulses, and though it had no regular beauty was in the highest degree agreeable to contemplate. Madame Merle was a tall, fair, plump woman ; everything in her person was round and replete, though without those accumu- lations which minister to indolence. Her features were thick, but there was a graceful harmony among them, and her com- plexion had a healthy clearness. She had a small grey eye, with a great deal of light in it an eye incapable of dulness, and, according to some people, incapable of tears ; and a wide, firm mouth, which, when she smiled, drew itself upward to the left side, in a manner that most people thought very odd, some very affected, and a few very graceful. Isabel inclined to range herself in the last category. Madame Merle had thick, fair hair, which was arranged with picturesque simplicity, and a large white hand, of a perfect shape a shape so perfect that its owner, preferring to leave it unadorned, wore no rings. Isabel had taken her at first, as we have seen, for a Frenchwoman ; but extended observation led her to say to herself that Madame Merle might be a German a German of rank, a countess, a princess. Isabel would never have supposed that she had been born in Brooklyn though she could doubtless not have justified her assumption that the air of distinction, possessed by Madame Merle in so eminent a degree, was inconsistent with such a birth. It was true that the national banner had floated immediately over the spot of the lady's nativity, and the breezy freedom of the stars and stripes might have shed an influence upon the attitude which she then and there took towards life. And yet Madame Merle had evidently nothing of the fluttered, flapping quality of a morsel of bunting in the wind ; her deportment expressed the repose and confidence which come from a large experience. Experience, however, had not quenched her youth ; it had simply made her sympathetic and supple. She was in a word a woman of ardent impulses, kept in admirable order. What an ideal combination ! thought Isabel. She made these reflections while the three ladies sat at their tea ; but this cerempny was interrupted before long by the arrival