Page 394 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

The Countess Gemini also came to call upon her, but the
Countess was quite another affair. She was by no means a
blank sheet; she had been written over in a variety of hands,
and Mrs. Touchett, who felt by no means honoured by her
visit, pronounced that a number of unmistakeable blots
were to be seen upon her surface. The Countess gave rise in-
deed to some discussion between the mistress of the house
and the visitor from Rome, in which Madame Merle (who
was not such a fool as to irritate people by always agree-
ing with them) availed herself felicitously enough of that
large licence of dissent which her hostess permitted as free-
ly as she practised it. Mrs. Touchett had declared it a piece
of audacity that this highly compromised character should
have presented herself at such a time of day at the door of a
house in which she was esteemed so little as she must long
have known herself to be at Palazzo Crescentini. Isabel had
been made acquainted with the estimate prevailing un-
der that roof: it represented Mr. Osmond’s sister as a lady
who had so mismanaged her improprieties that they had
ceased to hang together at all—which was at the least what
one asked of such matters—and had become the mere float-
ing fragments of a wrecked renown, incommoding social
circulation. She had been married by her mother—a more
administrative person, with an appreciation of foreign ti-
tles which the daughter, to do her justice, had probably by
this time thrown offto Italian nobleman who had perhaps
given her some excuse for attempting to quench the con-
sciousness of outrage. The Countess, however, had consoled
herself outrageously, and the list of her excuses had now lost

394 The Portrait of a Lady