Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/59

 " Come and see me, then, two days hence. I am staying at Mrs. Touchett's—the Palazzo Crescentini—and the girl will be there."

"Why didn't you ask me that at first, simply, without speaking of the girl?" said Osmond. "You could have had her there at any rate."

Madame Merle looked at him in the manner of a woman whom no question that he could ask would find unprepared. "Do you wish to know why? Because I have spoken of you to her."

Osmond frowned and turned away. "I would rather not know that." Then, in a moment, he pointed out the easel supporting the little water-colour drawing. "Have you seen that—my last?"

Madame Merle drew near and looked at it a moment. "Is it the Venetian Alps—one of your last year's sketches?"

"Yes—but how you guess everything!"

Madame Merle looked for a moment longer; then she turned away. "You know I don't care for your drawings."

"I know it, yet I am always surprised at it. They are really so much better than most people's."

"That may very well be. But as the only thing you do, it's so little. I should have liked you to do so many other things: those were my ambitions."

"Yes; you have told me many times—things that were impossible."

"Things that were impossible," said Madame Merle. And then, in quite a different tone—"In itself your little picture is very good." She looked about the room at the old cabinets, the pictures, the tapestries, the surfaces of faded silk. "Your rooms, at least, are perfect," she went on. "I am struck with