Page 534 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

plain my wishes to you.’ And he flattered himself he spoke
rather sternly.
‘I don’t see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why
did you apply to Madame Merle?’
‘I asked her for an opinion-for nothing more. I did so be-
cause she had seemed to me to know you very well.’
‘She doesn’t know me so well as she thinks,’ said Os-
mond.
‘I’m sorry for that, because she has given me some little
ground for hope.’
Osmond stared into the fire a moment. ‘I set a great price
on my daughter.’
‘You can’t set a higher one than I do. Don’t I prove it by
wishing to marry her?’
‘I wish to marry her very well,’ Osmond went on with
a dry impertinence which, in another mood, poor Rosier
would have admired.
‘Of course I pretend she’d marry well in marrying me.
She couldn’t marry a man who loves her more-or whom, I
may venture to add, she loves more.’
‘I’m not bound to accept your theories as to whom my
daughter loves’-and Osmond looked up with a quick, cold
smile.
‘I’m not theorizing. Your daughter has spoken.’
‘Not to me,’ Osmond continued, now bending forward a
little and dropping his eyes to his boot-toes.
‘I have her promise, sir!’ cried Rosier with the sharpness
of exasperation.
As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a

534 The Portrait of a Lady