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not eager to please (his repeated visits had been nothing;
he was boring himself to death on his hill-top and he came
merely for amusement). Isabel had kept her sentiments to
herself, and her journey to Greece and Egypt had effectu-
ally thrown dust in her companion’s eyes. Madame Merle
accepted the event-she was unprepared to think of it as a
scandal; but that she had played any part in it, double or
single, was an imputation against which she proudly pro-
tested. It was doubtless in consequence of Mrs. Touchett’s
attitude, and of the injury it offered to habits consecrated
by many charming seasons, that Madame Merle had, after
this, chosen to pass many months in England, where her
credit was quite unimpaired. Mrs. Touchett had done her a
wrong; there are some things that can’t be forgiven. But Ma-
dame Merle suffered in silence; there was always something
exquisite in her dignity.
Ralph, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while
engaged in this pursuit he had yet felt afresh what a fool he
had been to put the girl on her guard. He had played the
wrong card, and now he had lost the game. He should see
nothing, he should learn nothing; for him she would always
wear a mask. His true line would have been to profess de-
light in her union, so that later, when, as Ralph phrased it,
the bottom should fall out of it, she might have the pleasure
of saying to him that he had been a goose. He would gladly
have consented to pass for a goose in order to know Isabel’s
real situation. At present, however, she neither taunted him
with his fallacies nor pretended that her own confidence was
justified; if she wore a mask it completely covered her face.

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