Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/173

165 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 165 even in the worst weather, that the two ladies always came hack with a healthy glow in their cheeks, looking at the soles of their neat, stout hoots, and declaring that their walk had done them inexpressible good. Before lunch Madame Merle was always engaged; Isahel admired the inveteracy with which she occupied herself. Our heroine had always passed for a person of resources and had taken a certain pride in "being one ; hut she envied the talents, the accomplishments, the aptitudes, of Madame Merle. She found herself desiring to emulate them, and in this and other ways Madame Merle presented herself as a model. " I should like to be like that ! " Isabel secretly exclaimed, more than once, as one of her friend's numerous facets suddenly caught the light, and "before long she knew that she had learned a lesson from this exemplary woman. It took no very long time, indeed, for Isahel to feel that she was, as the phrase is, under an in- fluence. " What is the harm," she asked herself, " so long as it is a good one 1 The more one is under a good influence the better. The only thing is to see our steps as we take them to understand them as we go. That I think I shall always do. I needn't be afraid of becoming too pliable ; it is my fault that I am not pliable enough." It is said that imitation is the sincerest flattery ; and if Isabel was tempted to reproduce in her deportment some of the most graceful features of that of her friend, it was not so much because she desired herself to shine as because she wished to hold up the lamp for Madame Merle. She liked her extremely ; but she admired feer even more than she liked her. She sometimes wondered what Henrietta Stack- pole would say to her thinking so much of this brilliant fugitive from Brooklyn; and had a conviction that Henrietta would not approve of it. Henrietta would not like Madame Merle ; for reasons that she could not have denned, this truth came home to Isabel. On the other hand she was equally sure that should the occasion offer, her new friend would accommodate herself perfectly to her old ; Madame Merle was too humorous, too observant, not to do justice to Henrietta, and on becoming acquainted with her would probably give the measure of a tact which Miss Stackpole could not hope to emulate. She appeared to have, in her experience, a touchstone for everything, and somewhere in the capacious pocket of her genial memory she would find the key to Henrietta's virtues. " That is the great A hing," Isabel reflected ; " that is the supreme good fortune : to be in a better position for appreciating people than they are for appreciating you." And she added that this, when one con- sidered it, was simply the essence of the aristocratic situation.