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353 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 353 perfectly. But neither am I ; therefore I am determined not to get into trouble. A little harm is very soon done ; a mistake is made before one knows it. Of course, if I had wished to make love to your husband, I had ten years to do it in, and nothing to prevent ; so it isn't likely I shall begin to-day, when I am so much less attractive than I was. But if I were to annoy you by seeming to take a place that doesn't belong to me, you wouldn't make that reflection ; you would simply say that I was forgetting certain differences. I am determined not to forget them. Of course a good friend isn't always thinking of that ; one doesn't suspect one's friends of injustice. I don't suspect you, my dear, in the least ; but I suspect human nature. Don't think I make myself uncomfortable ; I am not always watching myself. I think I sufficiently prove it in talking to you as I do now. All I wish to say is, however, that if you were to be jealous that is the form it would take I should be sure to think it was a little my fault. It certainly wouldn't be your husband's." Isabel had had three years to think over Mrs. Touchett's theory that Madame Merle had made Gilbert Osmond's marriage. We know how she had at first received it. Madame Merle might have made Gilbert Osmond's marriage, but she certainly had not made Isabel Archer's. That was the work of Isabel scarcely knew what : of nature, of providence, of fortune, of the eternal mystery of things. It was true that her aunt's complaint had been not so much of Madame Merle's activity as of her dupli- city ; she had brought about the marriage and then she had denied her guilt. Such guilt would not have been great, to Isabel's mind ; she couldn't make a crime of Madame Merle's having been the cause of the most fertile friendship she had ever formed. That occurred to her just before her marriage, after her little discussion with her aunt. If Madame Merle had desired the event, she could only say it had been a very happy thought. With her, moreover, she had been perfectly straightforward; she had never concealed her high opinion of Gilbert Osmond. After her marriage Isabel discovered that her husband took a less com- fortable view of the matter ; he^seldom spoke of Madame Merle, and when his wife alluded to her he usually let the allusion drop. "Don't you like her?" Isabel had once said to him. "She thinks a great deal of you." " I will tell you once for all," Osmond had answered. " I liked her once better than I do to-day. I am tired of her, and I am rather ashamed of it. She is so good ! I am glad she is not in Italy ; it's a sort of rest. Don't talk of her too much ; A A