Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/252

 Merle's, intimating that had she been able to cross the Atlantic, she would have been present not only as a witness but as a critic. Her return to Europe took place somewhat later, and she effected a meeting with Isabel in the autumn, in Paris, when she indulged—perhaps a trifle too freely—her critical genius. Poor Osmond, who was chiefly the subject of it, protested so sharply that Henrietta was obliged to declare to Isabel that she had taken a step which erected a barrier between them. "It isn't in the least that you have married—it is that you have married him," she deemed it her duty to remark; agreeing, it will be seen, much more with Ralph Touchett than she suspected, though she had few of his hesitations and compunctions. Henrietta's second visit to Europe, however, was not made in vain; for just at the moment when Osmond had declared to Isabel that he really must object to that newspaper-woman, and Isabel had answered that it seemed to her he took Henrietta too hard, the good Mr. Bantling appeared upon the scene and proposed that they should take a run down to Spain. Henrietta's letters from Spain proved to be the most picturesque she had yet published, and there was one in especial, dated from the Alhambra, and entitled 'Moors and Moonlight,' which generally passed for her masterpiece. Isabel was secretly disappointed at her husband's not having been able to judge the poor girl more humorously. She even wondered whether his sense of humour were by chance defective. Of course she herself looked at the matter as a person whose present happiness had nothing to grudge to Henrietta's violated conscience. Osmond thought their alliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn't imagine what they had in common. For him, Mr. Bantling's fellow-tourist was simply the most vulgar of women, and he also pronounced her the most abandoned. Against this latter clause of the