you to know her. She fills all your requirements.'
'More or less, of course.'
'No; quite literally. She's beautiful, accomplished, generous and, for an American, well-born. She's also very clever and very amiable, and she has a handsome fortune.'
Mr. Osmond listened to this in silence, appearing to turn it over in his mind with his eyes on his informant. 'What do you want to do with her?' he asked at last.
'What you see. Put her in your way.'
'Isn't she meant for something better than that?'
'I don't pretend to know what people are meant for,' said Madame Merle. 'I only know what I can do with them.'
'I'm sorry for Miss Archer!' Osmond declared.
Madame Merle got up. 'If that's a beginning of interest in her I take note of it.'
The two stood there face to face; she settled her mantilla, looking down at it as she did so. 'You're looking very well,' Osmond repeated still less relevantly than before. 'You have some idea. You're never so well as when you've got an idea; they're always becoming to you.'
In the manner and tone of these two persons, on first meeting at any juncture, and especially when they met in the presence of others, was something indirect and circumspect, as if they had approached each other obliquely and addressed each other by implication. The effect of each appeared to be to intensify to an appreciable degree the self-consciousness of the other. Madame Merle of course carried off any embarrassment better than her friend; but even Madame Merle had not on this occasion the form she would have liked to have—the perfect self-possession she would have wished to wear for her host. The point to be made is, however, that at a certain moment the element between them, whatever it was, always levelled itself and left them more closely face to face than either ever was with any one else. This was what had happened now. They stood there knowing each other well and each on the whole willing to accept the satisfaction of knowing as a compensation for the inconvenience—whatever it might be—of being known. 'I wish very much you were not so heartless,' Madame Merle quietly said. 'It has always been against you, and it will be against you now.'
'I'm not so heartless as you think. Every now and then something touches me—as for instance your saying just now that your ambitions are for me. I don't understand it; I don't see how or why they should be. But it touches me, all the same.'
'You'll probably understand it even less as time goes on. There are some things you'll never understand. There's no particular need you should.'
'You, after all, are the most remarkable of women,' said Osmond. 'You have more in you than almost any one. I don't see why you think Mrs. Touchett's niece should matter very much to me, when—when—' But he paused a moment.
'When I myself have mattered so little?'
'That of course is not what I meant to say. When I've known and appreciated such a woman as you.'
'Isabel Archer's better than I,' said Madame Merle.
Her companion gave a laugh. 'How little you must think of her to say that!'
'Do you suppose I'm capable of jealousy? Please answer me that.'
'With regard to me? No; on the whole I don't.'
'Come and see me then, two days hence. I'm staying at Mrs. Touchett's—Palazzo Crescentini—and the girl will be there.'
'Why didn't you ask me that at first simply, without speaking of the girl?' said Osmond. 'You could have had her there at any rate.'
Madame Merle looked at him in the manner of a woman whom no question he could ever put would find unprepared. 'Do you wish to know why? Because I've spoken of you to her.'
Osmond frowned and turned away. 'I'd rather not know that.' Then in a moment he pointed out the easel supporting the little water-colour drawing. 'Have you seen what's there—my last?'
Madame Merle drew near and considered. 'Is it the Venetian Alps—one of your last year's sketches?'
'Yes—but how you guess everything!'
She looked a moment longer, then turned away. 'You know I don't care for your drawings.'
'I know it, yet I'm always surprised at it. They're really so much better than most people's.'
'That may very well be. But as the only thing you do—well, it's so little. I should have liked you to do so many other things: those were my ambitions.'
'Yes; you've told me many times—things that were impossible.'
'Things that were impossible,' said Madame Merle. And then in quite a different tone: 'In itself your little picture's very good.' She looked about the room—at the old cabinets, pictures, tapestries, surfaces of faded silk. 'Your rooms at least are perfect. I'm struck with that afresh whenever I come back; I know none better anywhere. You understand this sort of thing as nobody anywhere does. You've such adorable taste.'
'I'm sick of my adorable taste,' said Gilbert Osmond.
'You must nevertheless let Miss Archer come and see it. I've told her about it.'
'I don't object to showing my things—when people are not idiots.'
'You do it delightfully. As cicerone of your museum you appear to particular advantage.'
Mr. Osmond, in return for this compliment, simply looked at once colder and more attentive. 'Did you say she
