Page 691 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

‘It’s not of him that I’m considerate-it’s of myself!’ Isabel
answered.
It was not surprising Gilbert Osmond should not have
taken comfort in Miss Stackpole; his instinct had naturally
set him in opposition to a young lady capable of advising his
wife to withdraw from the conjugal roof.
When she arrived in Rome he had said to Isabel that he
hoped she would leave her friend the interviewer alone;
and Isabel had answered that he at least had nothing to fear
from her. She said to Henrietta that as Osmond didn’t like
her she couldn’t invite her to dine, but they could easily see
each other in other ways. Isabel received Miss Stackpole
freely in her own sitting-room, and took her repeatedly to
drive, face to face with Pansy, who, bending a little forward,
on the opposite seat of the carriage, gazed at the celebrated
authoress with a respectful attention which Henrietta occa-
sionally found irritating. She complained to Isabel that Miss
Osmond had a little look as if she should remember every-
thing one said. ‘I don’t want to be remembered that way,’
Miss Stackpole declared; ‘I consider that my conversation
refers only to the moment, like the morning papers. Your
stepdaughter, as she sits there, looks as if she kept all the
back numbers and would bring them out some day against
me.’ She could not teach herself to think favourably of Pan-
sy, whose absence of initiative, of conversation, of personal
claims, seemed to her, in a girl of twenty, unnatural and
even uncanny. Isabel presently saw that Osmond would
have liked her to urge a little the cause of her friend, insist
a little upon his receiving her, so that he might appear to

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