Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/417

409 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 409 his interest will make him say 1 " he asked, as he took her hand. She shook her head, rather dryly not discouragingly and he went on, " It will make him say that your want of zeal is owing to jealousy." He stopped a moment ; her face made him afraid. " To jealousy ? " " To jealousy of his daughter." She blushed red and threw baclc^her head. "You are not kind," she said, in a voice that he had never heard on her lips. " Be frank with me, and you'll see," said Ealph. But she made no answer ; she only shook her hand out of his own, which he tried sstill to hold, and rapidly went out of the room. She made up her mind to speak to Pansy, and she took an occasion on the same day, going to the young girl's room before dinner. Pansy was already dressed ; she was always in advance of the time ; it seemed to illustrate her pretty patience and the graceful stillness with which she could sit and wait. At present she was seated in her fresh array, before the bed-room fire; she had blown out her candles on the completion of her toilet, in accordance with the economical habits in which she had been brought up and which she was now more careful than ever to observe ; so that the room was lighted only by a couple of logs. The rooms in the Palazzo Koccanera were as spacious as they were numerous, and Pansy's virginal bower was an immense chamber with a dark, heavily-timbered ceiling. Its diminutive mistress, in the midst of it, appeared but a speck of humanity, and as she got up, with quick deference, to welcome Isabel, the latter was more than ever struck with her shy sincerity. Isabel had a difficult task the only thing was to perform ir, as simply as possible. She felt bitter and angry, but she warned herself against betraying it to Pansy. She was afraid even of look- ing too grave, or at least too stern ; she was afraid of frighten- ing her. But Pansy seemed to have guessed that she had come a little as a confessor; for after she had moved the chair in which she had been sitting a little nearer to the fire, and Isabel had taken her place in it, she kneeled down on a cushion in front of her, looking up and resting her clasped hands on her stepmother's knees. What Isabel wished to do was to hear from her own lips that her mind was not occupied with Lord Warburton ; but if she desired the assurance, she felc herself by no means at liberty to provoke it. The girl's father would have qualified this as rank treachery ; and indeed Isabel knew that if Pansy should display the smallest germ of a disposition to encourage Lord Warburton, her own duty was to hold her