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a delusion this was scarcely better than its being an affecta-
tion. Isabel wandered among these ugly possibilities until
she had completely lost her way; some of them, as she sud-
denly encountered them, seemed ugly enough. Then she
broke out of the labyrinth, rubbing her eyes, and declared
that her imagination surely did her little honour and that
her husband’s did him even less. Lord Warburton was as
disinterested as he need be, and she was no more to him
than she need wish. She would rest upon this till the con-
trary should be proved; proved more effectually than by a
cynical intimation of Osmond’s.
Such a resolution, however, brought her this evening but
little peace, for her soul was haunted with terrors which
crowded to the foreground of thought as quickly as a place
was made for them. What had suddenly set them into livelier
motion she hardly knew, unless it were the strange impres-
sion she had received in the afternoon of her husband’s
being in more direct communication with Madame Merle
than she suspected. That impression came back to her from
time to time, and now she wondered it had never come be-
fore. Besides this, her short interview with Osmond half an
hour ago was a striking example of his faculty for making
everything wither that he touched, spoiling everything for
her that he looked at. It was very well to undertake to give
him a proof of loyalty; the real fact was that the knowledge
of his expecting a thing raised a presumption against it. It
was as if he had had the evil eye; as if his presence were a
blight and his favour a misfortune. Was the fault in himself,
or only in the deep mistrust she had conceived for him? This

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