Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/321

313 ,THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 313 for the present to declare his passion ; but it seemed to him when they parted the young lady to go down into Italy, and her admirer to proceed to Geneva, where he was under bonds to join some friends that he should be very unhappy if he were not to see her again. The simplest way to ^o so was to go in the. autumn to Rome, where Miss Osmond was domiciled with her family. Rosier started on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital and reached it on the first of November. It was a pleasant thing to do ; but for the young man there was a strain of the heroic in the enterprise. He was nervous about the fever, and November, after all, was rather early in the season. Fortune, however, favours the brave ; and Mr. Rosier, who took three grains of quinine every day, had at the end of a month no cause to deplore his temerity. He had made to a certain extent good use of his time ; that is, he had perceived that Miss Pansy Osmond had not a flaw in her composition. She was admirably finished : she was in excellent style. He thought of her in amorous meditation a good deal as he might have thought of a Dresden-china shepherdess. Miss Osmond, indeed, in the bloom of her juvenility, had a touch of the rococo, which Rosier, whose taste was predominantly for that manner, could not fail to appreciate. That he esteemed the productions of comparatively frivolous periods would have been apparent from the attention he bestowed upon Madame Merle's drawing-room, which, although furnished with specimens of every style, was especially rich in articles of the last two centuries. He had immediately put a glass into one eye and looked round ; and then " By Jove ! she has some jolly good things ! " he had murmured to himself. The room was small, and densely filled with furniture ; it gave an impression of faded silk and little statuettes which might totter if one moved. Rosier got up and wandered about with his careful tread> bending over the tables charged with knick- Knacks and the cushions embossed with princely arms. When Madame Merle came in she found him standing before the fire- place, with his nose very close to the great lace flounce attached to the damask cover of the mantel. He had lifted it delicately, as if he were smelling it. " It's old Venetian," she said ; " it's rather good." " It's too good for this ; you ought to wear it." " They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the .same situation." "Ah, but I can't wear mine," said Rosier, smiling. " I don't see why you shouldn't ! I have better lace than that to wear."