Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/370

362 362 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. Isabel frowned a little. " Where did you iearn that "? " " Mrs. Touchett told me. Not you never ! " said Madame Merle, smiling. " I certainly never told you that." " You might have done so when we were "by way of being confidential with each other. But you really told me very little ; I have often thought so since." Isabel had thought so too, sometimes with a certain satisfac- tion. But she did not admit it now perhaps because she did not wish to appear to exult in it. " You seem to have had an excellent informant in my aunt," she simply said. " She let me know that you had declined an offer of marriage from Lord Warburton, because she was greatly vexed, and was full of the subject. Of course I think you have done better in doing as you did. But if you wouldn't marry Lord Warburton yourself, make him the reparation of helping him to marry some one else." Isabel listened to this with a face which persisted in not reflecting the bright expressiveness of Madame Merle's. But in a moment she said, reasonably and gently enough, " I should be very glad indeed if, . as regards Pansy, it could be arranged." Upon which her companion, who seemed to regard this as a speech of good omen, embraced her more tenderly than might have been expected, and took her departure. XLI. OSMOND touched on this matter that evening for the first time ; coming very late into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. They had spent the evening at home, and Pansy had gone to bed; he himself had been sitting since dinner in a small apartment in which he had arranged his books and which he called his study. At ten o'clock Lord Warburton had come in, as he always did when he knew from Isabel that she was to be at home ; he was going somewhere else, and he sat for half-an- hour. Isabel, after asking him for news of Ealph, said very little to him, on purpose ; she wished him to talk with the young girl. She pretended to read ; she even went after a little to the piano ; she asked herself whether she might not leave the room. She had come little by little to think well of the idea of Pansy's becoming the wife of the master of beautiful Lockleigh, though at first it had not presented itself in a manner to excite