第97章

"Precisely.But you won't be able to help it.""Is she beautiful, clever, rich, splendid, universally intelligent and unprecedentedly virtuous? It's only on those conditions that Icare to make her acquaintance.You know I asked you some time ago never to speak to me of a creature who shouldn't correspond to that description.I know plenty of dingy people; I don't want to know any more.""Miss Archer isn't dingy; she's as bright as the morning.She corresponds to your description; it's for that I wish 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 Itake 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.