Page 692 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

suffer for good manners’ sake. Her immediate acceptance
of his objections put him too much in the wrong-it being in
effect one of the disadvantages of expressing contempt that
you cannot enjoy at the same time the credit of expressing
sympathy. Osmond held to his credit, and yet he held to his
objections-all of which were elements difficult to reconcile.
The right thing would have been that Miss Stackpole should
come to dine at Palazzo Roccanera once or twice, so that
(in spite of his superficial civility, always so great) she might
judge for herself how little pleasure it gave him. From the
moment, however, that both the ladies were so unaccom-
modating, there was nothing for Osmond but to wish the
lady from New York would take herself off. It was surprising
how little satisfaction he got from his wife’s friends; he took
occasion to call Isabel’s attention to it.
‘You’re certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish
you might make a new collection,’ he said to her one morn-
ing in reference to nothing visible at the moment, but in
a tone of ripe reflection which deprived the remark of all
brutal abruptness. ‘It’s as if you had taken the trouble to
pick out the people in the world that I have least in com-
mon with. Your cousin I have always thought a conceited
ass-besides his being the most ill-favoured animal I know.
Then it’s insufferably tiresome that one can’t tell him so; one
must spare him on account of his health. His health seems
to me the best part of him; it gives him privileges enjoyed
by no one else. If he’s so desperately ill there’s only one way
to prove it; but he seems to have no mind for that. I can’t
say much more for the great Warburton. When one real-

692 The Portrait of a Lady