Page 574 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

conquests she took no credit for them. The two were con-
stantly together; Mrs. Osmond was rarely seen without her
stepdaughter. Isabel liked her company; it had the effect of
one’s carrying a nosegay composed all of the same flower.
And then not to neglect Pansy, not under any provocation
to neglect her-this she had made an article of religion. The
young girl had every appearance of being happier in Isabel’s
society than in that of any one save her father, whom she ad-
mired with an intensity justified by the fact that, as paternity
was an exquisite pleasure to Gilbert Osmond, he had always
been luxuriously mild. Isabel knew how Pansy liked to be
with her and how she studied the means of pleasing her. She
had decided that the best way of pleasing her was negative,
and consisted in not giving her trouble-a conviction which
certainly could have had no reference to trouble already ex-
isting. She was therefore ingeniously passive and almost
imaginatively docile; she was careful even to moderate the
eagerness with which she assented to Isabel’s propositions
and which might have implied that she could have thought
otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social ques-
tions, and though she delighted in approbation, to the point
of turning pale when it came to her, never held out her hand
for it. She only looked toward it wistfully-an attitude which,
as she grew older, made her eyes the prettiest in the world.
When during the second winter at Palazzo Roccanera she
began to go to parties, to dances, she always, at a reasonable
hour, lest Mrs. Osmond should be tired, was the first to pro-
pose departure. Isabel appreciated the sacrifice of the late
dances, for she knew her little companion had a passionate

574 The Portrait of a Lady