the image of a quiet, clever, sensitive, distinguished man, strolling on a moss-grown terrace above the sweet Val d'Arno and holding by the hand a little girl whose bell-like clearness gave a new grace to childhood.The picture had no flourishes, but she liked its lowness of tone and the atmosphere of summer twilight that pervaded it.It spoke of the kind of personal issue that touched her most nearly; of the choice between objects, subjects, contacts- what might she call them?- of a thin and those of a rich association; of a lonely, studious life in a lovely land; of an old sorrow that sometimes ached to-day; of a feeling of pride that was perhaps exaggerated, but that had an element of nobleness; of a care for beauty and perfection so natural and so cultivated together that the career appeared to stretch beneath it in the disposed vistas and with the ranges of steps and terraces and fountains of a formal Italian garden- allowing only for arid places freshened by the natural dews of a quaint half-anxious, half-helpless fatherhood.At Palazzo Crescentini Mr.Osmond's manner remained the same; diffident at first-oh self-conscious beyond doubt! and full of the effort (visible only to a sympathetic eye) to overcome this disadvantage; an effort which usually resulted in a great deal of easy, lively, very positive, rather aggressive, always suggestive talk.Mr.Osmond's talk was not injured by the indication of an eagerness to shine; Isabel found no difficulty in believing that a person was sincere who had so many of the signs of strong conviction- as for instance an explicit and graceful appreciation of anything that might be said on his own side of the question, said perhaps by Miss Archer in especial.What continued to please this young woman was that while he talked so for amusement he didn't talk, as she had heard people, for "effect." He uttered his ideas as if, odd as they often appeared, he were used to them and had lived with them; old polished knobs and heads and handles, of precious substance, that could be fitted if necessary to new walking-sticks- not switches plucked in destitution from the common tree and then too elegantly waved about.One day he brought his small daughter with him, and she rejoiced to renew acquaintance with the child, who, as she presented her forehead to be kissed by every member of the circle, reminded her vividly of an ingenue in a French play.Isabel had never seen a little person of this pattern;American girls were very different- different too were the maidens of England.Pansy was so formed and finished for her tiny place in the world, and yet in imagination, as one could see, so innocent and infantine.She sat on the sofa by Isabel; she wore a small grenadine mantle and a pair of the useful gloves that Madame Merle had given her- little grey gloves with a single button.She was like a sheet of blank paper- the ideal jeune fille of foreign fiction.Isabel hoped that so fair and smooth a page would be covered with an edifying text.
The Countess Gemini also came to call upon her, but the Countess was quite another affair.She was by no means a blank sheet; she had been written over in a variety of hands, and Mrs.Touchett, who felt by no means honoured by her visit, pronounced that a number of unmistakeable blots were to be seen upon her surface.The Countess gave rise indeed to some discussion between the mistress of the house and the visitor from Rome, in which Madame Merle (who was not such a fool as to irritate people by always agreeing with them)availed herself felicitously enough of that large licence of dissent which her hostess permitted as freely as she practised it.Mrs.
Touchett had declared it a piece of audacity that this highly compromised character should have presented herself at such a time of day at the door of a house in which she was esteemed so little as she must long have known herself to be at Palazzo Crescentini.
Isabel had been made acquainted with the estimate prevailing under that roof: it represented Mr.Osmond's sister as a lady who had so mismanaged her improprieties that they had ceased to hang together at all- which was at the least what one asked of such matters- and had become the mere floating fragments of a wrecked renown, incommoding social circulation.She had been married by her mother- a more administrative person, with an appreciation of foreign titles which the daughter, to do her justice, had probably by this time thrown off-to Italian nobleman who had perhaps given her some excuse for attempting to quench the consciousness of outrage.The Countess, however, had consoled herself outrageously, and the list of her excuses had now lost itself in the labyrinth of her adventures.Mrs.
Touchett had never consented to receive her, though the Countess had made overtures of old.Florence was not an austere city; but, as Mrs.Touchett said, she had to draw the line somewhere.
