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brought her children to Italy after her husband’s death, and
Mrs. Touchett remembered her during the year that fol-
lowed her arrival. She thought her a horrible snob; but this
was an irregularity of judgement on Mrs. Touchett’s part,
for she, like Mrs. Osmond, approved of political marriages.
The Countess was very good company and not really the
featherhead she seemed; all one had to do with her was to
observe the simple condition of not believing a word she
said. Madame Merle had always made the best of her for her
brother’s sake; he appreciated any kindness shown to Amy,
because (if it had to be confessed for him) he rather felt she
let down their common name. Naturally he couldn’t like
her style, her shrillness, her egotism, her violations of taste
and above all of truth: she acted badly on his nerves, she was
not his sort of woman. What was his sort of woman? Oh, the
very opposite of the Countess, a woman to whom the truth
should be habitually sacred. Isabel was unable to estimate
the number of times her visitor had, in half an hour, pro-
faned it: the Countess indeed had given her an impression
of rather silly sincerity. She had talked almost exclusively
about herself; how much she should like to know Miss Ar-
cher; how thankful she should be for a real friend; how base
the people in Florence were; how tired she was of the place;
how much she should like to live somewhere else—in Par-
is, in London, in Washington; how impossible it was to get
anything nice to wear in Italy except a little old lace; how
dear the world was growing everywhere; what a life of suf-
fering and privation she had led. Madame Merle listened
with interest to Isabel’s account of this passage, but she had

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