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bation. Isabel approved in abundance, and the abundance
had the personal touch that the child’s affectionate nature
craved. She watched her indications as if for herself also
much depended on them-Pansy already so represented part
of the service she could render, part of the responsibility she
could face. Her father took so the childish view of her that
he had not yet explained to her the new relation in which he
stood to the elegant Miss Archer. ‘She doesn’t know,’ he said
to Isabel; ‘she doesn’t guess; she thinks it perfectly natural
that you and I should come and walk here together simply
as good friends. There seems to me something enchantingly
innocent in that; it’s the way I like her to be. No, I’m not a
failure, as I used to think; I’ve succeeded in two things. I’m
to marry the woman I adore, and I’ve brought up my child,
as I wished, in the old way.’
He was very fond, in all things, of the ‘old way”; that had
struck Isabel as one of his fine, quiet, sincere notes. ‘It oc-
curs to me that you’ll not know whether you’ve succeeded
until you’ve told her,’ she said. ‘You must see how she takes
your news. She may be horrified-she may be jealous.’
‘I’m not afraid of that; she’s too fond of you on her own
account. I should like to leave her in the dark a little longer-
to see if it will come into her head that if we’re not engaged
we ought to be.’
Isabel was impressed by Osmond’s artistic, the plastic
view, as it somehow appeared, of Pansy’s innocence-her
own appreciation of it being more anxiously moral. She was
perhaps not the less pleased when he told her a few days lat-
er that he had communicated the fact to his daughter, who

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