Page 445 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

ed wire—not chattering, but conversing, and showing the
same respectful interest in Isabel’s affairs that Isabel was so
good to take in hers. Isabel wondered at her; she had nev-
er had so directly presented to her nose the white flower of
cultivated sweetness. How well the child had been taught,
said our admiring young woman; how prettily she had been
directed and fashioned; and yet how simple, how natural,
how innocent she had been kept! Isabel was fond, ever, of
the question of character and quality, of sounding, as who
should say, the deep personal mystery, and it had pleased
her, up to this time, to be in doubt as to whether this ten-
der slip were not really all-knowing. Was the extremity of
her candour but the perfection of self-consciousness? Was
it put on to please her father’s visitor, or was it the direct ex-
pression of an unspotted nature? The hour that Isabel spent
in Mr. Osmond’s beautiful empty, dusky rooms—the win-
dows had been half-darkened, to keep out the heat, and here
and there, through an easy crevice, the splendid summer
day peeped in, lighting a gleam of faded colour or tarnished
gilt in the rich gloom—her interview with the daughter of
the house, I say, effectually settled this question. Pansy was
really a blank page, a pure white surface, successfully kept
so; she had neither art, nor guile, nor temper, nor talent—
only two or three small exquisite instincts: for knowing
a friend, for avoiding a mistake, for taking care of an old
toy or a new frock. Yet to be so tender was to be touching
withal, and she could be felt as an easy victim of fate. She
would have no will, no power to resist, no sense of her own
importance; she would easily be mystified, easily crushed:

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