Page 575 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

pleasure in this exercise, taking her steps to the music like
a conscientious fairy. Society, moreover, had no drawbacks
for her; she liked even the tiresome parts-the heat of ball-
rooms, the dulness of dinners, the crush at the door, the
awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day, in this
vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed, ap-
preciative posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as
if she had been taken to drive for the first time.
On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one
of the gates of the city and at the end of half an hour had
left the carriage to await them by the roadside while they
walked away over the short grass of the Campagna, which
even in the winter months is sprinkled with delicate flow-
ers. This was almost a daily habit with Isabel, who was fond
of a walk and had a swift length of step, though not so swift
a one as on her first coming to Europe. It was not the form
of exercise that Pansy loved best, but she liked it, because
she liked everything; and she moved with a shorter un-
dulation beside her father’s wife, who afterwards, on their
return to Rome, paid a tribute to her preferences by mak-
ing the circuit of the Pincian or the Villa Borghese. She had
gathered a handful of flowers in a sunny hollow, far from
the walls of Rome, and on reaching Palazzo Roccanera she
went straight to her room, to put them into water. Isabel
passed into the drawing-room, the one she herself usually
occupied, the second in order from the large ante-cham-
ber which was entered from the staircase and in which even
Gilbert Osmond’s rich devices had not been able to correct
a look of rather grand nudity. just beyond the threshold of

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