Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/137

 Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator.

"It is not true. I am scrupulously kind."

"That's exactly what I mean!" Gilbert Osmond exclaimed, so humorously that his joke needs to be explained.

We knew that he was fond of originals, of rarities, of the superior, the exquisite; and now that he had seen Lord Warburton, whom he thought a very fine example of his race and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of taking to himself a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in his collection of choice objects by rejecting the splendid offer of a British aristocrat. Gilbert Osmond had a high appreciation of the British aristocracy—he had never forgiven Providence for not making him an English duke—and could measure the unexpectedness of this conduct. It would be proper that the woman he should marry should have done something of that sort.