Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/238

230 230 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. ness almost surprised our young lady, who wondered why he should take so much trouble for her ; and she was oppressed at last with the accumulation of beauty and knowledge to which she found herself introduced. There was enough for the present ; she had ceased to attend to what he said ; she listened to him with attentive eyes, but she was hot thinking of what he told her. He probably thought she was cleverer than she was; Madame Merle would have told him so; which was a pity, because in the end he would be sure to find out, and then perhaps even her real cleverness would not reconcile him to his mistake. A part of Isabel's fatigue came fr,om the effort to appear as intelligent as she believed Madame Merle had described her, and from the fear (very unusual with her) of exposing not her ignorance ; for that she cared comparatively little but her possible grossness of perception. It would have annoyed her to express a liking for something which her host, in his superior enlightenment, would think she ought not to like ; or to pass by something at which the truly initiated mind would arrest itself. She was very careful, therefore, as to what she said, as to what she noticed or failed to notice more careful than she had ever been before. They came back into the first of the rooms, where the tea had been served ; but as the two other ladies were still on the terrace, and as Isabel had not yet been made acquainted with the view, which constituted the paramount distinction of the place, Mr. Osmond directed her steps into the garden without more delay. Madame Merle and the Countess had had chairs brought out, and as the afternoon was lovely, the Countess proposed they should take their tea in the open air. Pansy, therefore, was sent to bid the servant bring out the tray. The sun had got low, the golden light took a deeper tone, and on the mountains and the plain that stretched beneath them, the masses of purple shadow seemed to glow as richly as the places that were still exposed. The scene had an extraordinary charm. The air was almost solemnly still, and the large expanse of the landscape, with its gardenlike culture and nobleness of outline, its teeming valley and deli- cately-fretted hills, its peculiarly human-looking touches of habitation, lay there in splendid harmony and classic grace. " You seem so well pleased that I think you can be trusted to come back," Mr. Osmond said, as he led his companion to one of the angles of the terrace. " I shall certainly come back," Isabel answered, " in spite of what you say about its being bad to live in Italy. What was that you said about one's natural mission ? I wonder if I