Page 682 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

dy: that was the only pain. He was too strange, too different;
he didn’t touch her. Still, the working of his morbid passion
was extraordinary, and she felt a rising curiosity to know in
what light he saw himself justified. ‘I might say to you that
I judge you’ve nothing to say to me that’s worth hearing,’
she returned in a moment. ‘But I should perhaps be wrong.
There’s a thing that would be worth my hearing-to know in
the plainest words of what it is you accuse me.’
‘Of having prevented Pansy’s marriage to Warburton.
Are those words plain enough?’
‘On the contrary, I took a great interest in it. I told you so;
and when you told me that you counted on me-that I think
was what you said-I accepted the obligation. I was a fool to
do so, but I did it.’
‘You pretended to do it, and you even pretended reluc-
tance to make me more willing to trust you. Then you began
to use your ingenuity to get him out of the way.’
‘I think I see what you mean,’ said Isabel.
‘Where’s the letter you told me he had written me?’ her
husband demanded.
‘I haven’t the least idea; I haven’t asked him.’
‘You stopped it on the way,’ said Osmond.
Isabel slowly got up; standing there in her white cloak,
which covered her to her feet, she might have represented
the angel of disdain, first cousin to that of pity. ‘Oh, Gil-
bert, for a man who was so fine-!’ she exclaimed in a long
murmur.
‘I was never so fine as you. You’ve done everything you
wanted. You’ve got him out of the way without appearing

682 The Portrait of a Lady