238 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. " You may say what you piease," said Madame Merle, who had listened to this quick outbreak none the less attentively, we may believe, because her eye wandered away from the speaker, and her hands busied themselves with adjusting the knots of ribbon on her dress. " You Osmonds are a fine race your blood must flow from some very pure source. Your brother, like an intelligent man, has had the conviction of it, if he has not had the proofs. You are modest about it, but you yourself are extremely distinguished. What do you say about your niece? The child's a little duchess. Nevertheless," Madame Merle added, " it will not be an easy matter for Osmond to marry Miss Archer. But he can try." " I hope she will refuse him. It will take him down a little/' " We must not forget that he is one of the cleverest of men." " I have heard you say that before ; but I haven't yet dis- covered what he has done." " What he has done 1 He has done nothing that has. had to be undone. And he has known how to wait." " To wait for Miss Archer's money 1 How much of it is there?" " That's not what I mean," said Madame Merle. " Miss Archer has seventy thousand pounds." " Well, it is a pity she is so nice," the Countess declared. " To be sacrificed, any girl would do. She needn't be superior." " If she were not superior, your brother would never look at her. He must have the best." " Yes," rejoined the Countess, as they went forward a little to meet the others, " he is very hard to please. That makes me fear for her happiness ! " XXVI. GILBERT OSMOND came to see Isabel again ; that is, he came to the Palazzo Crescentini. He had other friends there as well ; and to Mrs. Touchett and Madame Merle he was always impar- tially civil ; but the former of these ladies noted the fact that in the course of a fortnight he called five times, and compared it with another fact that she found no difficulty in remembering. Two visits a year had hitherto constituted his regular tribute to Mrs. Touchett's charms, and she had never observed that he selected for such visits those moments, of almost periodical recurrence, when Madame Merle was under her roof. It was
