Page 554 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

There was something fixed and mechanical in the serenity
painted on it; this was not an expression, Ralph said-it was
a representation, it was even an advertisement. She had lost
her child; that was a sorrow, but it was a sorrow she scarce-
ly spoke of; there was more to say about it than she could
say to Ralph. It belonged to the past, moreover; it had oc-
curred six months before and she had already laid aside the
tokens of mourning. She appeared to be leading the life of
the world; Ralph heard her spoken of as having a ‘charm-
ing position.’ He observed that she produced the impression
of being peculiarly enviable, that it was supposed, among
many people, to be a privilege even to know her. Her house
was not open to every one, and she had an evening in the
week to which people were not invited as a matter of course.
She lived with a certain magnificence, but you needed to be
a member of her circle to perceive it; for there was nothing
to gape at, nothing to criticize, nothing even to admire, in
the daily proceedings of Mr. and Mrs. Osmond. Ralph, in
all this, recognized the hand of the master; for he knew that
Isabel had no faculty for producing studied impressions.
She struck him as having a great love of movement, of gai-
ety, of late hours, of long rides, of fatigue; an eagerness to be
entertained, to be interested, even to be bored, to make ac-
quaintances, to see people who were talked about, to explore
the neighbourhood of Rome, to enter into relation with cer-
tain of the mustiest relics of its old society. In all this there
was much less discrimination than in that desire for com-
prehensiveness of development on which he had been used
to exercise his wit. There was a kind of violence in some of

554 The Portrait of a Lady