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Updated: June 29, 2025
He had made to a certain extent good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain to finding a flaw in Pansy Osmond's composition. She was admirably finished; she had had the last touch; she was really a consummate piece. He thought of her in amorous meditation a good deal as he might have thought of a Dresden-china shepherdess.
Touchett offering her for a month the hospitality of Palazzo Crescentini the judicious Madame Merle spoke to Isabel afresh about Gilbert Osmond and expressed the hope she might know him; making, however, no such point of the matter as we have seen her do in recommending the girl herself to Mr. Osmond's attention.
The girl joined her presently, with a little fluttered flush, and Isabel, who scrupulously took Osmond's view of his daughter's complete dependence, consigned her, as a precious and momentary loan, to her appointed partner. About all this matter she had her own imaginations, her own reserves; there were moments when Pansy's extreme adhesiveness made each of them, to her sense, look foolish.
Hortense had turned very white and moved a little forward. "We may not disturb our loyal subject's possession. What does Osmond's daughter say?" questioned the king. Then Hortense took her fate in her hands. "Your Majesty," she said, "if Osmond's daughter did not want the lands, it would not be necessary to disturb the lieutenant."
It was a taste of Osmond's own not at all of hers; this she had told him the first time he came to the house, when, after asking himself for a quarter of an hour whether they had even better "French" than he in Paris, he was obliged on the spot to admit that they had, very much, and vanquished his envy, as a gentleman should, to the point of expressing to his hostess his pure admiration of her treasures.
But he wished also to be superlatively gentle. Isabel waited a little then she went on with majesty. "In everything that makes one care for people Mr. Osmond is pre-eminent. There may be nobler natures, but I've never had the pleasure of meeting one. Mr. Osmond's is the finest I know; he's good enough for me, and interesting enough, and clever enough.
Of course Osmond's a gentleman; his own sister needn't be reminded of that. But does he think he can marry any girl he happens to pick out? Osmond's a gentleman, of course; but I must say I've NEVER, no, no, never, seen any one of Osmond's pretensions! What they're all founded on is more than I can say. I'm his own sister; I might be supposed to know. Who is he, if you please?
Isabel waited, with a certain unuttered contentedness, to have her movements directed; she liked Mr. Osmond's talk, his company: she had what always gave her a very private thrill, the consciousness of a new relation.
"Come twenty year this day s'ennight," mutters the freebooter. "'Twas before I entered court service. Her father had four o' my fellows gibbeted at Charing Cross, Gad's me, I swore he'd sweat for it! She was Osmond's only child squalling brat coming with nurse over Hounslow Heath. 'Sdeath I see it yet! Postillions yelled like stuck pigs, nurses kicked over in coach dead away.
It came over her that in his wish to preserve appearances he was after all sincere, and that this, as far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutes before she had felt all the joy of irreflective action a joy to which she had so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to slow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond's touch.
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