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constantly reverted to Mrs. Osmond. ‘Do you know I was
wrong just now in saying you had changed?’ he presently
went on. ‘You seem to me, after all, very much the same.’
‘And yet I find it a great change to be married,’ said Isabel
with mild gaiety.
‘It affects most people more than it has affected you. You
see I haven’t gone in for that.’
‘It rather surprises me.’
‘You ought to understand it, Mrs. Osmond. But I do want
to marry,’ he added more simply.
‘It ought to be very easy,’ Isabel said, rising-after which
she reflected, with a pang perhaps too visible, that she was
hardly the person to say this. It was perhaps because Lord
Warburton divined the pang that he generously forbore to
call her attention to her not having contributed then to the
facility.
Edward Rosier had meanwhile seated himself on an ot-
toman beside Pansy’s tea-table. He pretended at first to talk
to her about trifles, and she asked him who was the new
gentleman conversing with her stepmother.
‘He’s an English lord,’ said Rosier. ‘I don’t know more.’
‘I wonder if he’ll have some tea. The English are so fond
of tea.’
‘Never mind that; I’ve something particular to say to
you.’
‘Don’t speak so loud-every one will hear,’ said Pansy.
‘They won’t hear if you continue to look that way; as
if your only thought in life was the wish the kettle would
boil.’

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