Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/236

 should have anything to communicate which it would please Mr. Rosier to hear.

"He doesn't like your having spoken to Pansy. Ah, he doesn't like it at all," said Madame Merle.

"I am perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell me so!"

"If you do that he will tell you more than you care to hear. Go to the house, for the next month, as little as possible, and leave the rest to me."

"As little as possible? Who is to measure that?"

"Let me measure it. Go on Thursday evenings with the rest of the world; but don't go at all at odd times, and don't fret about Pansy. I will see that she understands everything. She's a calm little nature; she will take it quietly."

Edward Rosier fretted about Pansy a good deal, but he did as he was advised, and waited for another Thursday evening before returning to the Palazzo Roccanera. There had been a party at dinner, so that although he went early the company was already tolerably numerous. Osmond, as usual, was in the first room, near the fire, staring straight at the door, so that, not to be distinctly uncivil, Rosier had to go and speak to him.

"I am glad that you can take a hint," Pansy's father said, slightly closing his keen, conscious eye.

"I take no hints. But I took a message, as I supposed it to be."

"You took it? Where did you take it?"

It seemed to poor Rosier that he was being insulted, and he waited a moment, asking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to.

"Madame Merle gave me, as I understood it, a message from you to the effect that you declined to give me the opportunity I desire—the opportunity to explain my wishes to you."