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tion, her sympathy were immediate and active; and they
were in direct proportion to a sentiment with which they
were in no way connected-a lively conjecture as to whether
Lord Warburton might be trying to make love to her. It was
not simply his words just then; it was others as well; it was
the reference and the continuity. This was what she thought
about while she pinned up Pansy’s dress. If it were so, as she
feared, he was of course unwitting; he himself had not tak-
en account of his intention. But this made it none the more
auspicious, made the situation none the less impossible. The
sooner he should get back into right relations with things
the better. He immediately began to talk to Pansy-on whom
it was certainly mystifying to see that he dropped a smile
of chastened devotion. Pansy replied, as usual, with a little
air of conscientious aspiration; he had to bend toward her a
good deal in conversation, and her eyes, as usual, wandered
up and down his robust person as if he had offered it to her
for exhibition. She always seemed a little frightened; yet her
fright was not of the painful character that suggests dislike;
on the contrary, she looked as if she knew that he knew she
liked him. Isabel left them together a little and wandered to-
ward a friend whom she saw near and with whom she talked
till the music of the following dance began, for which she
knew Pansy to be also engaged. The girl joined her present-
ly, with a little fluttered flush, and Isabel, who scrupulously
took Osmond’s view of his daughter’s complete depen-
dence, consigned her, as a precious and momentary loan,
to her appointed partner. About all this matter she had her
own imaginations, her own reserves; there were moments

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