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338 338 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. a few small ways a certain initiative. I should like, for instance, to introduce you to some of these people." " Oh, please don't; I like sitting here. Unless it be to that young lady in the blue dress. She has a charming face." " The one talking to the rosy young man 3 That's my hus- band's daughter." " Lucky man, your husband. What a dear little maid ! " "You must make her acquaintance." " In a moment, with pleasure. I like looking at her from here." He ceased to look at her, however, very soon ; his eyes constantly reverted to Mrs. Osmond. " Do you know I was wrong just now in saying that you had changed ? " he presently went on. " You seem to me, after all, very much the same." " And yet I find it's a great change to be married," said Isabel, with gaiety. " It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I haven't gone in for that." " It rather surprises me." "You ought to understand it, Mrs. Osmond. But I want to marry," he added, more simply. " It ought to be very easy," Isabel said, rising, and then blushing a little at the thought that she was hardly the person to say this. It was perhaps because Lord Warburton noticed her blush that he generously forbore to call her attention to the incongruity. Ed ward Hosier meanwhile had seated himself on an ottoman beside Pansy's tea-table. He pretended at first to talk to her about trifles, and she asked him who was the new gentleman conversing with her stepmother. " He's an English lord," said Kosier. " I don't know more." " I wonder if he will have some tea. The English are so fond if tea." " Never mind that ; I have something particular to say to you." " Don't speak so loud, or every one will hear us," said Pansy. " They won't hear us if you continue to look that way : as if your only thought in life was the wish that the kettle would boil." " It has just been filled ; the servants never know ! " the young girl exclaimed, with a little sigh. " Do you know what your father said to me just now 1 ? That you didn't mean what you said a week ago." " I don't mean everything I say. How can a young girl do that ? But I mean what I say to you."