Page 661 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

ray, before the bed-room fire; she had blown out her candles
on the completion of her toilet, in accordance with the eco-
nomical habits in which she had been brought up and which
she was now more careful than ever to observe; so that the
room was lighted only by a couple of logs. The rooms in
Palazzo Roccanera were as spacious as they were numer-
ous, and Pansy’s virginal bower was an immense chamber
with a dark, heavily-timbered ceiling. Its diminutive mis-
tress, in the midst of it, appeared but a speck of humanity,
and as she got up, with quick deference, to welcome Isabel,
the latter was more than ever struck with her shy sincer-
ity. Isabel had a difficult task-the only thing was to perform
it as simply as possible. She felt bitter and angry, but she
warned herself against betraying this heat. She was afraid
even of looking too grave, or at least too stern; she was
afraid of causing alarm. But Pansy seemed to have guessed
she had come more or less as a confessor; for after she had
moved the chair in which she had been sitting a little nearer
to the fire and Isabel had taken her place in it, she kneeled
down on a cushion in front of her, looking up and resting
her clasped hands on her stepmother’s knees. What Isabel
wished to do was to hear from her own lips that her mind
was not occupied with Lord Warburton; but if she desired
the assurance she felt herself by no means at liberty to pro-
voke it. The girl’s father would have qualified this as rank
treachery; and indeed Isabel knew that if Pansy should dis-
play the smallest germ of a disposition to encourage Lord
Warburton her own duty was to hold her tongue. It was dif-
ficult to interrogate without appearing to suggest; Pansy’s

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