Page 570 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

but she certainly had not made Isabel Archer’s. That was the
work of-Isabel scarcely knew what: of nature, providence,
fortune, of the eternal mystery of things. It was true her
aunt’s complaint had been not so much of Madame Mer-
le’s activity as of her duplicity: she had brought about the
strange event and then she had denied her guilt. Such guilt
would not have been great, to Isabel’s mind; she couldn’t
make a crime of Madame Merle’s having been the produc-
ing cause of the most important friendship she had ever
formed. This had occurred to her just before her marriage,
after her little discussion with her aunt and at a time when
she was still capable of that large inward reference, the tone
almost of the philosophic historian, to her scant young an-
nals. If Madame Merle had desired her change of state she
could only say it had been a very happy thought. With her,
moreover, she had been perfectly straightforward; she had
never concealed her high opinion of Gilbert Osmond. After
their union Isabel discovered that her husband took a less
convenient view of the matter; he seldom consented to fin-
ger, in talk, this roundest and smoothest bead of their social
rosary.
‘Don’t you like Madame Merle?’ Isabel had once said to
him. ‘She thinks a great deal of you.’
‘I’ll tell you once for all,’ Osmond had answered. ‘I liked
her once better than I do to-day. I’m tired of her, and I’m
rather ashamed of it. She’s so almost unnaturally good! I’m
glad she’s not in Italy; it makes for relaxation-for a sort of
moral detente. Don’t talk of her too much; it seems to bring
her back. She’ll come back in plenty of time.’

570 The Portrait of a Lady