'Thank you very much. Good-bye.'
There was something quietly firm about Isabel's visitor; he might go of his own movement, but wouldn't be dismissed. 'There's one thing more. I haven't asked anything of you—not even a thought in the future; you must do me that justice. But there's a little service I should like to ask. I shall not return home for several days; Rome's delightful, and it's a good place for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know you're sorry to leave it; but you're right to do what your aunt wishes.'
'She doesn't even wish it!' Isabel broke out strangely.
Osmond was apparently on the point of saying something that would match these words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply: 'Ah well, it's proper you should go with her, very proper. Do everything that's proper; I go in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You say you don't know me, but when you do you'll discover what a worship I have for propriety.'
'You're not conventional?' Isabel gravely asked.
'I like the way you utter that word! No, I'm not conventional: I'm convention itself. You don't understand that?' And he paused a moment, smiling. 'I should like to explain it.' Then with a sudden, quick, bright naturalness, 'Do come back again,' he pleaded. 'There are so many things we might talk about.'
She stood there with lowered eyes. 'What service did you speak of just now?'
'Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. She's alone at the villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who hasn't at all my ideas. Tell her she must love her poor father very much,' said Gilbert Osmond gently.
'It will be a great pleasure to me to go,' Isabel answered. 'I'll tell her what you say. Once more good- bye.'
On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she stood a moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and with an air of deliberation. She sat there till her companions came back, with folded hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her agitation—for it had not diminished—was very still, very deep. What had happened was something that for a week past her imagination had been going forward to meet; but here, when it came, she stopped—that sublime principle somehow broke down. The working of this young lady's spirit was strange, and I can only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem altogether natural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a last vague space it couldn't cross—a dusky, uncertain tract which looked ambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a moorland seen in the winter twilight. But she was to cross it yet.
CHAPTER XXX
She returned on the morrow to Florence, under her cousin's escort, and Ralph Touchett, though usually restive under railway discipline, thought very well of the successive hours passed in the train that hurried his companion away from the city now distinguished by Gilbert Osmond's preference—hours that were to form the first stage in a larger scheme of travel. Miss Stackpole had remained behind; she was planning a little trip to Naples, to be carried out with Mr. Bantling's aid. Isabel was to have three days in Florence before the 4th of June, the date of Mrs. Touchett's departure, and she determined to devote the last of these to her promise to call on Pansy Osmond. Her plan, however, seemed for a moment likely to modify itself in deference to an idea of Madame Merle's. This lady was still at Casa Touchett; but she too was on the point of leaving Florence, her next station being an ancient castle in the mountains of Tuscany, the residence of a noble family of that country, whose acquaintance (she had known them, as she said, 'forever') seemed to Isabel, in the light of certain photographs of their immense crenellated dwelling which her friend was able to show her, a precious privilege. She mentioned to this fortunate woman that Mr. Osmond had asked her to take a look at his daughter, but didn't mention that he had also made her a declaration of love.
'Ah, comme cela se trouve!' Madame Merle exclaimed. 'I myself have been thinking it would be a kindness to pay the child a little visit before I go off.'
'We can go together then,' Isabel reasonably said: 'reasonably' because the proposal was not uttered in the spirit of enthusiasm. She had prefigured her small pilgrimage as made in solitude; she should like it better so. She was nevertheless prepared to sacrifice this mystic sentiment to her great consideration for her friend.
That personage finely meditated. 'After all, why should we both go; having, each of us, so much to do during these last hours?'
'Very good; I can easily go alone.'
'I don't know about your going alone—to the house of a handsome bachelor. He has been married—but so long ago!'
Isabel stared. 'When Mr. Osmond's away what does it matter?'
'They don't know he's away, you see.'
'They? Whom do you mean?'
'Every one. But perhaps it doesn't signify.'
'If you were going why shouldn't I?' Isabel asked.
'Because I'm an old frump and you're a beautiful young woman.'
'Granting all that, you've not promised.'
'How much you think of your promises!' said the elder woman in mild mockery.
'I think a great deal of my promises. Does that surprise you?'
'You're right,' Madame Merle audibly reflected. 'I really think you wish to be kind to the child.'
'I wish very much to be kind to her.'
'Go and see her then; no one will be the wiser. And tell her I'd have come if you hadn't. Or rather,' Madame Merle added, 'DON'T tell her. She won't care.'
As Isabel drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the winding way which led to Mr. Osmond's hill-top, she wondered what her friend had meant by no one's being the wiser. Once in a while, at large intervals, this lady, whose voyaging discretion, as a general thing, was rather of the open sea than of the risky channel, dropped a
