Page 266 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

worst weather, that the two ladies always came back with
a healthy glow in their cheeks, looking at the soles of their
neat, stout boots and declaring that their walk had done
them inexpressible good. Before luncheon, always, Madame
Merle was engaged; Isabel admired and envied her rigid
possession of her morning. Our heroine had always passed
for a person of resources and had taken a certain pride in
being one; but she wandered, as by the wrong side of the
wall of a private garden, round the enclosed talents, accom-
plishments, aptitudes of Madame Merle. She found herself
desiring to emulate them, and in twenty such ways this lady
presented herself as a model. ‘I should like awfully to be so!’
Isabel secretly exclaimed, more than once, as one after an-
other of her friend’s fine aspects caught the light, and before
long she knew that she had learned a lesson from a high au-
thority. It took no great time indeed for her to feel herself,
as the phrase is, under an influence. ‘What’s the harm,’ she
wondered, ‘so long as it’s a good one? The more one’s un-
der a good influence the better. The only thing is to see our
steps as we take them—to understand them as we go. That,
no doubt, I shall always do. I needn’t be afraid of becoming
too pliable; isn’t it my fault that I’m not pliable enough?’ It is
said that imitation is the sincerest flattery; and if Isabel was
sometimes moved to gape at her friend aspiringly and de-
spairingly it was not so much because she desired herself to
shine as because she wished to hold up the lamp for Madame
Merle. She liked her extremely, but was even more dazzled
than attracted. She sometimes asked herself what Henrietta
Stackpole would say to her thinking so much of this per-

266 The Portrait of a Lady