Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/314

306 306 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. disliked Gilbert Osmond. This dislike was not alarming to Isabel ; she scarcely even regretted it ; for it served mainly to throw into higher relief the fact, in every way so honourable, that she married to please herself. One did other things to please other people ; one did this for a more personal satisfaction ; and Isabel's satisfaction was confirmed by her lover's admirable good conduct. Gilbert Osmond was in love, and he had .never deserved less than during these still, bright days, each of them numbered, which preceded the fulfilment of his hopes, the harsh criticism passed upon him by Ealph Touchett. The chief impression produced upon Isabel's mind by this criticism was that the passion of love separated its victim terribly from every one but the loved object. She felt herself disjoined from every one she had ever known before from her two sisters, who wrote to express a dutiful hope that she would be happy, and a sur- prise, somewhat more vague, at her not having chosen a consort who was the hero of a richer accumulation of anecdote ; from Henrietta, who, she was sure, would come out, too late, on pur- pose to remonstrate ; from Lord Warburton, who would certainly console himself, and from Caspar Goodwood, who perhaps would not ; from her aunt, who had cold, shallow ideas about marriage, for which she was not sorry to manifest her contempt ; and from Ralph, whose talk about having great views for her was surely but a whimsical cover for a personal disappointment. Ealph apparently wished her not to marry at all that was what it really meant because he was amused with the spectacle of her adventures as a single woman. His disappointment made him say angry things about the man she had preferred even to him : Isabel nattered herself that she believed Ealph had been angry. It was the more easy for her to believe this, because, as I say, she thought on the whole but little about it, and accepted as an incident of her lot the idea that to prefer Gilbert Osmond as she preferred him was perforce to break all other ties. She tasted of the sweets of this preference, and they made her feel that there was after all something very invidious in being in love ; much as the sentiment was theoretically approved of. It was the tragical side of happiness ; one's right was always made of the wrong of some one else. Gilbert Osmond was not demonstra- tive ; the consciousness of success, which must now have flamed high within him, emitted very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze. Contentment, on. his part, never took a vulgar form ; excitement, in the most self-conscious of men, was a kind of ecstasy of self-control. This disposition, however, made him an admirable lover ; it gave him a constant view of the amoious