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354 354 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. it seems to bring her back. She will come back in plenty of time." Madame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too late too late, I mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have lost. But meantime, if, as I have said, she was somewhat changed, Isabel's feelings were also altered. Her consciousness of the situation was as acute as of old, but it was much less satisfying. A dissatisfied mind, whatever else it lack, is rarely in want of reasons; they bloom as thick as buttercups in June. The fact of Madame Merle having had a hand in Gilbert Osmond's marriage ceased to be one of her titles to consideration; it seemed, after all, that there was not so much to thank her for. As time went on there was less and less ; and Isabel once said to herself that perhaps without; her these things would not have been. This reflection, however, was instantly stifled ; Isabel felt a sort of horror at having made it. " Whatever happens to me, let me not be unjust," she said ; " let me bear my burdens myself, and not shift them upon others ! " This disposition was tested, eventually, by that ingenious apology for her present conduct which Madame Merle saw fit to make, and of which I have given a sketch ; for there was something irritating there was almost an air of mockery in her neat discriminations and clear convictions. In Isabel's mind to-day there was nothing clear ; there was a confusion of regrets, a complication of fears. She felt helpless as she turned away from her brilliant friend, who had just made the statements I have quoted ; Madame Merle knew so little what she was thinking of ! Moreover, she herself was so unable to explain. Jealous of her jealous of her with Gilbert ? The idea just then suggested no near reality. She almost wished that jealousy had been possible ; it would be a kind of refreshment. Jealousy, after all, was in a sense one of the symptoms of happiness. Madame Merle, however, was wise; it would seem that she knew Isabel better than Isabel knew herself. This young woman had always been fertile in resolutions many of them of an elevated character ; but at no period had they flourished (in the privacy of her heart) more richly than to-day. It is true that they all had a family like- ness ; they might have been summed up in the determination that if she was to be unhappy it should not be by a fault of her own. The poor girl had always had a great desire to do her best, and she had not as yet been seriously discouraged. She wished, therefore, to hold fast to justice not to pay herself by petty revenges. To associate Madame Merle with her disappointment would be a petty revenge especially as the pleasure she might