Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/489

481 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 481 and in a moment had to lay her arm upon the mantel-shelf for support. She stood a minute so, and then upon her arm she dropped her dizzy head, with closed eyes and pale lips. " I have done wrong to speak I have made you ill ! " the Countess cried. " Ah, I must see Ralph ! " Isabel murmured ; not in resent- ment, not in the quick passion her companion had looked for ; but in a tone of exquisite far-reaching sadness. LIL THERE was a train for Turin and Paris that evening ; and After the Countess had left her, Isabel had a rapid and decisive conference with her maid, who was discreet, devoted, and active. After this, she thought (except of her journey) of only one thing. She must go and see Pansy ; from her she could not turn away. She had not seen her yet, as Osmond had given her to under- stand that it was too soon to begin. She drove at five o'clock to a high door in a narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza Navona, and was admitted by the portress of the convent, a genial and obsequious person. Isabel had been at this institution before ; she had come with Pansy to see the sisters. She knew they were good women, and she saw that the large rooms were clean and cheerful, and that the well-used garden had sun for winter and shade for spring. But she disliked the place, and it made her horribly sad ; not for the world would she have spent a night there. It produced to-day more than before the impres- sion of a well-appointed prison ; for it was not possible to pretend that Pansy was free to leave it. This innocent creature had been presented to her in a new and violent light, but the secondary effect of the revelation was to make Isabel reach out her hand to her. The portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent, while she went to make it known that there was a visitor for the dear young lady. The parlour was a vast, cold apartment, with new-looking furniture ; a large clean stove of white porce- lain, unlighted ; a collection of wax-flowers, under glass ; and a series of engravings from religious pictures on the walls. On the other occasion* Isabel had thought it less like Eome than like Philadelphia; but to-day she made no reflections; the apartment only seemed to her very empty and very soundless. The portress returned at the end of some five minutes, ushering I i