Page 742 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

Madame Merle pursued, ‘that made me so jealous of Isabel.
I want it to be my work,’ she added, with her face, which had
grown hard and bitter, relaxing to its habit of smoothness.
Her friend took up his hat and his umbrella, and after
giving the former article two or three strokes with his coat-
cuff, ‘On the whole, I think,’ he said, ‘you had better leave
it to me.’
After he had left her she went, the first thing, and lifted
from the mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he
had mentioned the existence of a crack; but she looked at it
rather abstractedly. ‘Have I been so vile all for nothing?’ she
vaguely wailed.

742 The Portrait of a Lady