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life barren to him. But Ralph Touchett had learned more or
less inscrutably to attend, and there could have been noth-
ing so ‘sustained’ to attend to as the general performance of
Madame Merle. He tasted her in sips, he let her stand, with
an opportuneness she herself could not have surpassed.
There were moments when he felt almost sorry for her; and
these, oddly enough, were the moments when his kindness
was least demonstrative. He was sure she had been yearn-
ingly ambitious and that what she had visibly accomplished
was far below her secret measure. She had got herself into
perfect training, but had won none of the prizes. She was al-
ways plain Madame Merle, the widow of a Swiss negociant,
with a small income and a large acquaintance, who stayed
with people a great deal and was almost as universally ‘liked’
as some new volume of smooth twaddle. The contrast be-
tween this position and any one of some half-dozen others
that he supposed to have at various moments engaged her
hope had an element of the tragical. His mother thought he
got on beautifully with their genial guest; to Mrs. Touchett’s
sense two persons who dealt so largely in too-ingenious the-
ories of conductthat is of their own—would have much in
common. He had given due consideration to Isabel’s inti-
macy with her eminent friend, having long since made up
his mind that he could not, without opposition, keep his
cousin to himself; and he made the best of it, as he had done
of worse things. He believed it would take care of itself; it
wouldn’t last forever. Neither of these two superior persons
knew the other as well as she supposed, and when each had
made an important discovery or two there would be, if not

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