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air of reproducing the more tiresome, the stale, the too-fa-
miliar parts of one’s own character. The gates of the girl’s
confidence were opened wider than they had ever been; she
said things to this amiable auditress that she had not yet
said to any one. Sometimes she took alarm at her candour:
it was as if she had given to a comparative stranger the key
to her cabinet of jewels. These spiritual gems were the only
ones of any magnitude that Isabel possessed, but there was
all the greater reason for their being carefully guarded. Af-
terwards, however, she always remembered that one should
never regret a generous error and that if Madame Merle
had not the merits she attributed to her, so much the worse
for Madame Merle. There was no doubt she had great mer-
its—she was charming, sympathetic, intelligent, cultivated.
More than this (for it had not been Isabel’s ill-fortune to go
through life without meeting in her own sex several persons
of whom no less could fairly be said), she was rare, supe-
rior and preeminent. There are many amiable people in the
world, and Madame Merle was far from being vulgarly good
natured and restlessly witty. She knew how to think—an ac-
complishment rare in women; and she had thought to very
good purpose. Of course, too, she knew how to feel; Isabel
couldn’t have spent a week with her without being sure of
that. This was indeed Madame Merle’s great talent, her most
perfect gift. Life had told upon her; she had felt it strongly,
and it was part of the satisfaction to be taken in her society
that when the girl talked of what she was pleased to call seri-
ous matters this lady understood her so easily and quickly.
Emotion, it is true, had become with her rather historic; she

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