Page 588 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

ity, which might prove to be inconveniently great; but she
inclined to see her as rather letting go, under suggestion,
than as clutching under deprecation-since she had certainly
the faculty of assent developed in a very much higher de-
gree than that of protest. She would cling, yes, she would
cling; but it really mattered to her very little what she clung
to. Lord Warburton would do as well as Mr. Rosier-espe-
cially as she seemed quite to like him; she had expressed
this sentiment to Isabel without a single reservation; she
had said she thought his conversation most interesting-he
had told her all about India. His manner to Pansy had been
of the rightest and easiest-Isabel noticed that for herself, as
she also observed that he talked to her not in the least in a
patronizing way, reminding himself of her youth and sim-
plicity, but quite as if she understood his subjects with that
sufficiency with which she followed those of the fashionable
operas. This went far enough for attention to the music and
the barytone. He was careful only to be kind-he was as kind
as he had been to another fluttered young chit at Garden-
court. A girl might well be touched by that; she remembered
how she herself had been touched, and said to herself that
if she had been as simple as Pansy the impression would
have been deeper still. She had not been simple when she
refused him; that operation had been as complicated as,
later, her acceptance of Osmond had been. Pansy, howev-
er, in spite of her simplicity, really did understand, and was
glad that Lord Warburton should talk to her, not about her
partners and bouquets, but about the state of Italy, the con-
dition of the peasantry, the famous grist-tax, the pellagra,

588 The Portrait of a Lady