228 THE POKTRAIT OF A LADY. tragically ; she shows it comically instead. She has got a nasty husband, though I am. not sure she makes the best of him. Of course, however, a nasty husband is an awkward thing. Madame Merle gives her excellent advice, but it's a good deal like giving a child a dictionary to learn a language with. He can look out the words, but he can't put them together. My sister needs a grammar, but unfortunately she is not grammatical. Excuse my troubling you with these details ; my sister was very right in saying that you have been taken into the family. Let me take down that picture ; you want more light." He took down the picture, carried it toward the window, related some curious facts about it. She looked at the other works of art, and he gave her such further information as might appear to be most acceptable to a young lady making a call on a summer afternoon. His pictures, his carvings and tapestries were interesting ; but after a while Isabel became conscious that the owner was more interesting still. He resembled no one she had ever seen ; most of the people she knew might be divided into groups of half-a-dozen specimens. There were one or two exceptions to this ; she could think, for instance, of no group that would contain her aunt Lydia. There were other people who were, relatively speaking, original original, as one might say, by courtesy such as Mr. Goodwood, as her cousin Ralph, as Henrietta Stackpole, as Lord "Warburton, as Madame Merle, But in essentials, when one came to look at them, these individuals belonged to types which were already present to her mind. Her mind contained no class which offered a natural place to Mr. Osmond he was a specimen apart. Isabel did not say all these things to herself at the time ; but she felt them, and afterwards they became distinct. For the moment she only said to herself that Mr. Osmond had the interest of rareness. It was not so much what he said and did, but rather what he withheld, that distinguished him; he indulged in no striking deflections from common usage; he was an original without being an eccentric. Isabel had never met a person of so fine a grain. The peculiarity was physical, to begin with, and it extended to his immaterial part. His dense, delicate hair, his overdrawn, retouched features, his clear complexion, ripe with- out being coarse, the very evenness of the growth of his beard, and that light, smooth, slenderness of structure which made the movement of a single one of his fingers produce the effect of an expressive gesture these personal points struck our observant young lady as the signs of an unusual sensibility. He was certainly fastidious and critical ; he was probably irritable. His
