Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/351

343 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 343 had told her, without circumlocution, that she had played too ingenious a part ; and Madame Merle, who never quarrelled with any one, who appeared to think no one worth it, and who had performed the miracle of living, more or less, for several years with Mrs. Touchett, without a symptom of irritation Madame Merle now took a very high tone, and declared that this was an accusation from which she could not stoop to defend herself. She added, however (without stooping), that her behaviour had been only too simple, that she had believed only what she saw, that she saw that Isabel was not eager to marry, and that Osmond was not eager to please (his repeated visits were nothing ; he was boring himself to death on his hill-top, and he came merely for amusement). Isabel had kept her sentiments to herself, and her journey to Greece and Egypt had effectually thrown dust in her companion's eyes. Madame Merle accepted the event she was unprepared to think of it as a scandal ; but that she had played any part in it, double or single, was an imputation against which she proudly protested. It was doubtless in consequence of Mrs. Touchett's attitude and of the injury it offered to habits consecrated by many charming seasons, that Madame Merle, after this, chose to pass many- months in England, where her credit was quite unimpaired. Mrs. Touchett had done her a wrong ; there are some things that can't be forgiven. But Madame Merle suffered in silence ; there was always something exquisite in her dignity. Ralph, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while he was engaged in this pursuit he felt afresh what a fool he had been to put the girl on her guard. He had played the wrong card, and now he had lost the game. He should see nothing, he should learn nothing ; for him she would always wear a mask. His true line would have been to profess delight in her marriage, so that later, when, as Ealph phrased it, the bottom should fall out of it, she might have the pleasure of saying to him that he~ had been a goose. He would gladly have consented to pass for a goose in order to know Isabel's real situation. But now she neither taunted him with his fallacies nor pretended that her own confidence was justified ;. if she wore a mask, it completely covered her face. There was something fixed and mechanical in the serenity painted upon it; this was not an expression, Ralph said it was a representation. She had lost her child ; that was a sorrow, but it was a sorrow she scarcely spoke of; there was more to say about it than she could say to Ralph. It belonged to the past, moreover ; it had occurred six months before, and she had already laid aside the tokens of mourning. She seemed