Page 274 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

answers a letter the day one gets it and that when one comes
to stay with her one doesn’t bring too much luggage and is
careful not to be taken ill. For Mrs. Touchett those things
constitute virtue; it’s a blessing to be able to reduce it to its
elements.’
Madame Merle’s own conversation, it will be perceived,
was enriched with bold, free touches of criticism, which,
even when they had a restrictive effect, never struck Isa-
bel as ill-natured. It couldn’t occur to the girl for instance
that Mrs. Touchett’s accomplished guest was abusing her;
and this for very good reasons. In the first place Isabel rose
eagerly to the sense of her shades; in the second Madame
Merle implied that there was a great deal more to say; and it
was clear in the third that for a person to speak to one with-
out ceremony of one’s near relations was an agreeable sign
of that person’s intimacy with one’s self. These signs of deep
communion multiplied as the days elapsed, and there was
none of which Isabel was more sensible than of her com-
panion’s preference for making Miss Archer herself a topic.
Though she referred frequently to the incidents of her own
career she never lingered upon them; she was as little of a
gross egotist as she was of a flat gossip.
‘I’m old and stale and faded,’ she said more than once;
‘I’m of no more interest than last week’s newspaper. You’re
young and fresh and of to-day; you’ve the great thing—
you’ve actuality. I once had it—we all have it for an hour.
You, however, will have it for longer. Let us talk about you
then; you can say nothing I shall not care to hear. It’s a sign
that I’m growing old—that I like to talk with younger peo-

274 The Portrait of a Lady