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merits. She had always observed that she got on better with
clever women than with silly ones like herself; the silly ones
could never understand her wisdom, whereas the clever
ones-the really clever ones-always understood her silliness.
It appeared to her that, different as they were in appearance
and general style, Isabel and she had somewhere a patch of
common ground that they would set their feet upon at last.
It was not very large, but it was firm, and they should both
know it when once they had really touched it. And then she
lived, with Mrs. Osmond, under the influence of a pleas-
ant surprise; she was constantly expecting that Isabel would
‘look down’ on her, and she as constantly saw this operation
postponed. She asked herself when it would begin, like fire-
works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she cared much,
but she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sister-in-
law regarded her with none but level glances and expressed
for the poor Countess as little contempt as admiration. In
reality Isabel would as soon have thought of despising her as
of passing a moral judgement on a grasshopper. She was not
indifferent to her husband’s sister, however; she was rather
a little afraid of her. She wondered at her; she thought her
very extraordinary. The Countess seemed to her to have no
soul; she was like a bright rare shell, with a polished surface
and a remarkably pink lip, in which something would rattle
when you shook it. This rattle was apparently the Count-
ess’s spiritual principle, a little loose nut that tumbled about
inside of her. She was too odd for disdain, too anomalous
for comparisons. Isabel would have invited her again (there
was no question of inviting the Count); but Osmond, after

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