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apparently took a rather hopeless view of his sister’s tone;
he turned the conversation to another topic. He presently
sat down on the other side of his daughter, who had shy-
ly brushed Isabel’s fingers with her own; but he ended by
drawing her out of her chair and making her stand between
his knees, leaning against him while he passed his arm
round her slimness. The child fixed her eyes on Isabel with
a still, disinterested gaze which seemed void of an inten-
tion, yet conscious of an attraction. Mr. Osmond talked of
many things; Madame Merle had said he could be agreeable
when he chose, and to-day, after a little, he appeared not
only to have chosen but to have determined. Madame Merle
and the Countess Gemini sat a little apart, conversing in
the effortless manner of persons who knew each other well
enough to take their ease; but every now and then Isabel
heard the Countess, at something said by her companion,
plunge into the latter’s lucidity as a poodle splashes after a
thrown stick. It was as if Madame Merle were seeing how far
she would go. Mr. Osmond talked of Florence, of Italy, of the
pleasure of living in that country and of the abatements to
the pleasure. There were both satisfactions and drawbacks;
the drawbacks were numerous; strangers were too apt to see
such a world as all romantic. It met the case soothingly for
the human, for the social failure—by which he meant the
people who couldn’t ‘realize,’ as they said, on their sensibil-
ity: they could keep it about them there, in their poverty,
without ridicule, as you might keep an heirloom or an in-
convenient entailed place that brought you in nothing. Thus
there were advantages in living in the country which con-

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