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217 THE POKTRAIT OF A LADY. 217 leaving his sentence unfinished. " I should be so happy if you could know my daughter," he went on, a moment afterwards. Isabel answered that she should be delighted to see Miss Osmond, and that if Madame Merle would show her the way to the hill-top she should be very grateful. Upon this assurance the visitor took his leave ; after which Isabel fully expected that her friend would scold her for having been so stupid. But to her surprise, Madame Merle, who indeed never fell into the matter-of-course, said to her in a few moments " You were charming, my dear ; you were just as one would have wished you. You are never disappointing." A rebuke might possibly have been irritating, though it is much more probable that Isabel would have taken it in good part ; but, strange to say, the words that Madame Merle actually used caused her the first feeling of displeasure she had known this lady to excite. " That is more than I intended," she answered, coldly. " I am under no obligation that I know of to charm Mr. Osmond." Madame Merle coloured a moment ; but we know it was not her habit to retract. " My dear child, I didn't speak for him, poor man ; I spoke for yourself. It is not of course a question as to his liking you ; it matters little whether he likes you or not ! But I thought you liked him." " I did," said Isabel, honestly. " But I don't see what that matters, either." " Everything that concerns you matters to me," Madame Merle returned, with a sort of noble gentleness, " especially when at the same time another old friend is concerned." Whatever Isabel's obligations may have been to Mr. Osmond, it must be admitted that she found them sufficient to lead her to ask Ralph sundry questions about him. She thought Ralph's judgments cynical, but she flattered herself that she had learned to make allowance for that. " Do I know him ? " said her cousin. " Oh, yes, I know him ; not well, but on the whole enough. I have never culti- vated his society, and he apparently has never found mine indispensable to his happiness. Who is he what is he ? He is a mysterious American, who has been living these twenty years, or more, in Italy. Why do I call him mysterious? Only as a cover for my ignorance ; I don't know his antecedents, his family, his origin. For all I know, he may be a prince in disguise ; he rather looks like one, by the way like a prince who has abdicated in a fit of magnanimity, and has been in a state of disgust ever since. He used to live in Rome j but of