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his impressions of Roman society. She looked at him, as she
drew her needle through her tapestry, with sweet submis-
sive eyes, and when she lowered them she gave little quiet
oblique glances at his person, his hands, his feet, his clothes,
as if she were considering him. Even his person, Isabel might
have reminded her, was better than Mr. Rosier’s. But Isabel
contented herself at such moments with wondering where
this gentleman was; he came no more at all to Palazzo Roc-
canera. It was surprising, as I say, the hold it had taken of
her-the idea of assisting her husband to be pleased.
It was surprising for a variety of reasons which I shall
presently touch upon. On the evening I speak of, while Lord
Warburton sat there, she had been on the point of taking
the great step of going out of the room and leaving her com-
panions alone. I say the great step, because it was in this
light that Gilbert Osmond would have regarded it, and Isa-
bel was trying as much as possible to take her husband’s
view. She succeeded after a fashion, but she fell short of
the point I mention. After all she couldn’t rise to it; some-
thing held her and made this impossible. It was not exactly
that it would be base or insidious; for women as a general
thing practise such manoeuvres with a perfectly good con-
science, and Isabel was instinctively much more true than
false to the common genius of her sex. There was a vague
doubt that interposed-a sense that she was not quite sure. So
she remained in the drawing-room, and after a while Lord
Warburton went off to his party, of which he promised to
give Pansy a full account on the morrow. After he had gone
she wondered if she had prevented something which would

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