'Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father, and that it would probably take her very far.'
'That seems to me a very proper feeling,' said Lord Warburton.
'Certainly; it's a very proper feeling.' Isabel remained silent for some moments; the room continued empty; the sound of the music reached them with its richness softened by the interposing apartments. Then at last she said: 'But it hardly strikes me as the sort of feeling to which a man would wish to be indebted for a wife.'
'I don't know; if the wife's a good one and he thinks she does well!'
'Yes, of course you must think that.'
'I do; I can't help it. You call that very British, of course.'
'No, I don't. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you, and I don't know who should know it better than you. But you're not in love.'
'Ah, yes I am, Mrs. Osmond!'
Isabel shook her head. 'You like to think you are while you sit here with me. But that's not how you strike me.'
'I'm not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes it so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss Osmond?'
'No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons.'
'I don't agree with you. I'm delighted to have good reasons.'
'Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn't care a straw for them.'
'Ah, really in love—really in love!' Lord Warburton exclaimed, folding his arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a little. 'You must remember that I'm forty-two years old. I won't pretend I'm as I once was.'
'Well, if you're sure,' said Isabel, 'it's all right.'
He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before him. Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to his friend. 'Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?' She met his eyes, and for a moment they looked straight at each other. If she wished to be satisfied she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in his expression the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own account—that she was perhaps even in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a hope, but such as it was it told her what she wanted to know. Not for an instant should he suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying her step-daughter an implication of increased nearness to herself, or of thinking it, on such a betrayal, ominous. In that brief, extremely personal gaze, however, deeper meanings passed between them than they were conscious of at the moment.
'My dear Lord Warburton,' she said, smiling, 'you may do, so far as I'm concerned, whatever comes into your head.'
And with this she got up and wandered into the adjoining room, where, within her companion's view, she was immediately addressed by a pair of gentlemen, high personages in the Roman world, who met her as if they had been looking for her. While she talked with them she found herself regretting she had moved; it looked a little like running away—all the more as Lord Warburton didn't follow her. She was glad of this, however, and at any rate she was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that when, in passing back into the ball-room, she found Edward Rosier still planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. 'You did right not to go away. I've some comfort for you.'
'I need it,' the young man softly wailed, 'when I see you so awfully thick with him!'
'Don't speak of him; I'll do what I can for you. I'm afraid it won't be much, but what I can I'll do.'
He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. 'What has suddenly brought you round?'
'The sense that you are an inconvenience in doorways!' she answered, smiling as she passed him. Half an hour later she took leave, with Pansy, and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many other departing guests, waited a while for their carriage. Just as it approached Lord Warburton came out of the house and assisted them to reach their vehicle. He stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if she had amused herself; and she, having answered him, fell back with a little air of fatigue. Then Isabel, at the window, detaining him by a movement of her finger, murmured gently: 'Don't forget to send your letter to her father!'
CHAPTER XLIV
The Countess Gemini was often extremely bored—bored, in her own phrase, to extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she struggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an unaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town, where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose talent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an obliging disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who won from him; and he bore a name which, having a measurable value in Florence, was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without currency in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very dull Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared to pay frequent visits to a place where, to carry it off, his dulness needed more explanation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her eyes upon Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that she had not an habitation there. She was ashamed to say how seldom she had been allowed to visit that city; it scarcely made the matter better that there were other members of the Florentine nobility who never had been there at all. She went whenever she could; that was all she could say. Or rather not all, but all she said she could say. In fact she had much more to say about it, and had often set forth the reasons why she hated Florence and wished to end her days in the shadow of Saint Peter's. They are reasons, however, that do not closely concern us, and were usually summed up in the declaration that Rome, in short, was the Eternal City and that Florence was simply a pretty little place like any other. The Countess apparently needed to connect the idea of eternity with her amusements. She was convinced that society was infinitely more interesting in Rome, where you met celebrities all winter at evening parties. At Florence there were no celebrities; none at least that one had heard of. Since her brother's marriage her impatience had greatly increased; she was so sure his wife had a more brilliant life than herself. She was not so intellectual as Isabel, but she was intellectual enough to do justice to Rome—not to the ruins and the catacombs, not even perhaps to the monuments and museums, the church ceremonies and the scenery; but certainly to all the rest. She heard a great deal about her sister-in-law and knew perfectly that Isabel was having a beautiful time. She had indeed seen it for herself on the only occasion on which she had enjoyed the hospitality of Palazzo Roccanera. She had spent a week there during the first winter of her brother's marriage, but she had not been encouraged to renew this satisfaction. Osmond didn't want her—that she was perfectly aware of; but she would have gone all the same, for after all she didn't care two straws about Osmond. It was her husband who wouldn't let her, and the
