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tached such different ideas, such different associations and
desires, to the same formulas. Her notion of the aristocrat-
ic life was simply the union of great knowledge with great
liberty; the knowledge would give one a sense of duty and
the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But for Osmond it was al-
together a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated attitude.
He was fond of the old, the consecrated, the transmitted; so
was she, but she pretended to do what she chose with it. He
had an immense esteem for tradition; he had told her once
that the best thing in the world was to have it, but that if one
was so unfortunate as not to have it one must immediate-
ly proceed to make it. She knew that he meant by this that
she hadn’t it, but that he was better off; though from what
source he had derived his traditions she never learned. He
had a very large collection of them, however; that was very
certain, and after a little she began to see. The great thing
was to act in accordance with them; the great thing not only
for him but for her. Isabel had an undefined conviction that
to serve for another person than their proprietor traditions
must be of a thoroughly superior kind; but she neverthe-
less assented to this intimation that she too must march to
the stately music that floated down from unknown periods
in her husband’s past; she who of old had been so free of
step, so desultory, so devious, so much the reverse of pro-
cessional. There were certain things they must do, a certain
posture they must take, certain people they must know and
not know. When she saw this rigid system close about her,
draped though it was in pictured tapestries, that sense of
darkness and suffocation of which I have spoken took pos-

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