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283 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 283 learning that lie was not guilty of an absence. Isabel, on her side, had not been a fortnight in Eome before she proposed to Madame Merle that they should make a little pilgrimage to the East. Madame Merle remarked that her friend was restless, but she added that she herself had always been consumed with the desire to visit Athens and Constantinople. The two ladies accordingly embarked on this expedition, and spent three months in Greece, in Turkey, in Egypt. Isabel found much to interest her in these countries, though Madame Merle continued to remark that even among the most classic sites, the scenes most calculated to suggest repose and reflection, her restlessness pre- vailed. Isabel travelled rapidly, eagerly, audaciously ; she was like a thirsty person draining cup after cup. " Madame Merle, for the present, was a most efficient duenna. It was on Isabel's invitation she had come, and she imparted all necessary dignity to the girl's uncountenanced condition. She played her part with the sagacity that might have been expected of her ; she effaced herself, she accepted the position of a companion whose expenses were profusely paid. The situation, however, had no hardships, and people who met this graceful pair on their travels would not have been able to tell you which was the patroness and which the client. To say that Madame Merle improved on acquaintance would misrepresent the impression she made upon Isabel, who had thought her from the first a perfectly enlightened woman. At the end of an intimacy of three months Isabel felt that she knew her better ; her character had revealed itself, and Madame Merle had also at last redeemed her promise of relating her history from her own point of view a consummation the more desirable as Isabel had already heard it related from the point of view of others. This history was so sad a one (in so far as it concerned the late M. Merle, an adventurer of the lowest class, who had taken advantage, years before, of her youth, and of an inexperience in which doubtless those who knew her only now would find it difficult to believe) ; it abounded so in startling and lamentable incidents, that Isabel wondered the poor lady had kept so much of her freshness, her interest in life. Into this freshness of Madame Merle's she obtained a considerable insight ; she saw that it was, after all, a tolerably artificial bloom. Isabel liked her as much as ever, but there was a certain corner of the curtain that never was lifted ; it was as if Madame Merle had remained after all a foreigner. She had once said that she came from a distance, that she belonged to the old world, and Isabel never lost the impression that she was the product of a different clime from her own that