Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/68

 poor man; I spoke for yourself. It is not of course a question as to his liking you; it matters little whether he likes you or not! But I thought you liked him."

"I did," said Isabel, honestly. "But I don't see what that matters, either."

"Everything that concerns you matters to me," Madame Merle returned, with a sort of nohle gentleness, "especially when at the same time another old friend is concerned."

Whatever Isabel's obligations may have been to Mr. Osmond, it must be admitted that she found them sufficient to lead her to ask Ralph sundry questions about him. She thought Kalph's judgments cynical, but she flattered herself that she had learned to make allowance for that.

"Do I know him?" said her cousin. "Oh, yes, I know him; not well, but on the whole enough. I have never cultivated his society, and he apparently has never found mine indispensable to his happiness. Who is he—what is he? He is a mysterious American, who has been living these twenty years, or more, in Italy. Why do I call him mysterious? Only as a cover for my ignorance; I don't know his antecedents, his family, his origin. For all I know, he may be a prince in disguise; he rather looks like one, by the way—like a prince who has abdicated in a fit of magnanimity, and has been in a state of disgust ever since. He used to live in Rome; but of late years he has taken up his abode in Florence; I remember hearing him say once that Rome has grown vulgar. He has a great dread of vulgarity; that's his special line; he hasn't any other that I know of. He lives on his income, which I suspect of not being vulgarly large. He's a poor gentleman—that's what he calls himself. He married young and lost his wife, and I believe he has a daughter. He also has a sister, who is married