THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 379 occupation and comfort of Osmond's life. The feeling ^as deep, because it was sincere ; he had had a revelation that, after all, she could dispense with him. If to herself the idea was start- ling, if it presented itself at first as a kind of infidelity, a capa- city for pollution, what infinite effect might it not be expected to have had upon him ? It was very simple ; he despised her ; she had no traditions, and the moral horizon of a Unitarian minister. Poor Isabel, who had never been able to understand Unitarianism ! This was the conviction that she had been living with now for a time that she had ceased to measure. What was coming what was before them ] That was her constant ques- tion. What would he do what ought she to do 1 ? When a man hated his wife, what did it lead to 1 She didn't hate him, that she was sure of, for every little while she felt a passionate wish to give him a pleasant surprise. Very often, however, she felt afraid, and it used to come over her, as I have intimated, that she had deceived him at the very first. They were strangely married, at all events, and it was an awful life. Until that morning he had scarcely spoken to her for a week ; his manner was as dry as a burned-out fire. She knew there was a special reason ; he was displeased at Ralph Touchett's staying on in Borne. He thought she saw too much of her cousin he had told her a week before that it was indecent she should go to him at his hotel. He would have said more than this if Ralph's invalid state had not appeared to make it brutal to denounce him; but having to contain himself only deepened Osmond's disgust. Isabel read all this as she would have read the hour on the clock-face ; she was as perfectly aware that the sight of her interest in her cousin stirred her husband's rage, as if Osmond had locked her into her bedroom which she was sure he wanted to do. It was her honest belief that on the whole she was not defiant ; but she certainly could not pretend to be indifferent to Ralph. She believed he was dying, at last, and that she should never see him again, and this gave her a tenderness for him that she had never known before. Nothing was a pleasure to her now ; how could anything be a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had tKrown away her life 1 There was an everlasting weight upon her heart there was a livid light upon everything. But Ralph's little visit was a lamp in the darkness ; for the hour that she sat with him her spirit rose. She felt to-day as if he had been her brother. She had never had a brother, but if she had, and she were in trouble, and he were dying, he would be dear to her as Ralph was. Ah yes, if Gilbert was jealous of her there was perhaps some reason; it didn't make Gilbert look
