Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/57

 "More or less, of course."

"No; quite literally. She is beautiful, accomplished, generous, and for an American, well-born. She is also very clever and very amiable, and she has a handsome fortune."

Mr. Osmond listened to this in silence, appearing to turn it over in his mind, with his eyes on his informant. "What do you want to do with her?" he asked, at last.

"What you see. Put her in your way."

"Isn't she meant for something better than that?"

"I don't pretend to know what people are meant for," said Madame Merle. "I only know what I can do with them."

"I am sorry for Miss Archer!" Osmond declared. Madame Merle got up. "If that is a beginning of interest in her, I take note of it."

The two stood there, face to face; she settled her mantilla, looking down at it as she did so.

"You are looking very well," Osmond repeated, still more irrelevantly than before. "You have got some idea. You are never as well as when you have got an idea; they are always becoming to you."

In the manner of these two persons, on first meeting on any occasion, and especially when they met in the presence of others, there was something indirect and circumspect, which showed itself in glance and tone. They approached each other obliquely, as it were, and they addressed each other by implication. The effect of each appeared to be to intensify to an embarrassing degree the self-consciousness of the other. Madame Merle of course carried off such embarrassments better than her friend; but even Madame Merle had not on this occasion the manner she would have liked to have—the perfect self-possession she would have wished to exhibit to her host. The point I wish