Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/475

467 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 467 she will have her piano. I have made the most liberal arrange- ments. There is to he nothing ascetic ; there is just to he a certain little feeling. She will have time to think, and there is something I want her to think about." Osmond spoke deliberately, reasonably, still with his head on one side, as if he were looking at the basket of flowers. His tone, however, was that of a man not so much offering an explanation as putting a thing into words almost into pictures to see, him- self, how it would look. He contemplated a while the picture lis had evoked, and seemed greatly pleased with it. And then ho went on " The Catholics are very wise, after all. The convent is a great institution ; we can't do without it ; it cor- responds to an essential need in families, in society. It's a school of good manners ; it's a school of repose. Oh, I don't want to detach my daughter from the world," he added ; " I don't want to make her fix her thoughts on the other one. This one is very well, after all, and she may think of it as much as she chooses. Only she must think of it in the right way." Isabel gave sn extreme attention to this little sketch; she found it indeed intensely interesting. It seemed to show her how far her husband's desire to be effective was capable of going to the point of playing picturesque tricks upon the delicate organism of his daughter. She could not understand his pur- pose, no not wholly; but she understood it better than he supposed or desired, inasmuch as she was convinced that the whole proceeding was an elaborate mystification, addressed to herself and destined to act ^pon her imagination. He wished to do something sudden and arbitrary, something unexpected and refined ; to mark the difference betweee his sympathies and her own, and to show that if he regarded his daughter as a precious work of art, it was natural he should be more and more careful about the finishing touches. If he wished to be effective i had succeeded ; the incident struck a chill into Isabel's heart. Pa. 'TJT had known the convent in her childhood and had found a happy home there ; she was fond of the good sisters, who were very fond of her, and there was therefore, for the moment, no definite hardship in her lot. But all the same, the girl had taken fright ; the impression her father wanted to make would evidently be sharp enough. The old Protestant tradition had never faded from Isabel's imagination, and as her thoughts attached themselves to this striking example of her husband's genius she sat looking, like him, at the basket of flowers poor little Pansy became the heroine of a tragedy. Osmond wished it to be known that he shrank from nothing, and IsaM found H H 2