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Updated: June 23, 2025
The next morning as he was preparing a sermon for the following Sunday, there came a knock at his study door. His brother came in. He was a fine looking man of two or three-and-fifty. "I can't stay," he said, "I've a long round, but I just looked in to tell you about your little heretic." Charles Osmond looked up anxiously. "It is as you thought," continued his brother.
Up to this time he had not disliked Osmond personally; he had only thought him very well-informed and obliging and more than he had supposed like the person whom Isabel Archer would naturally marry. His host had won in the open field a great advantage over him, and Goodwood had too strong a sense of fair play to have been moved to underrate him on that account.
With great difficulty they forced their way on, hooted and yelled at by the mob, who, however, made no attempt at violence. At length, reaching the shelter of the entrance lobby, Raeburn left them for a moment, pausing to give directions to the door keepers. Just then, to his great surprise, Charles Osmond caught sight of his son standing only a few paces from them.
But what she was afraid of was not her husband his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not even her own later judgement of her conduct a consideration which had often held her in check; it was simply the violence there would be in going when Osmond wished her to remain.
"It was more natural than I think you know," said Henrietta, who fixed her eyes on a distant point. And then she added, turning suddenly: "Isabel Archer, I beg your pardon. You don't know why? Because I criticised you, and yet I've gone further than you. Mr. Osmond, at least, was born on the other side!"
On the evening I speak of, while Lord Warburton sat there, she had been on the point of taking the great step of going out of the room and leaving her companions alone. I say the great step, because it was in this light that Gilbert Osmond would have regarded it, and Isabel was trying as much as possible to take her husband's view.
Perhaps he has gone to buy the wedding-ring and will come back with it next month, after I'm gone." "No, he'll not come back. Miss Osmond doesn't wish to marry him." "She's very accommodating! I knew she was fond of Isabel, but I didn't know she carried it so far." "I don't understand you," said Henrietta coldly, and reflecting that the Countess was unpleasantly perverse.
"Miss Archer can certainly have nothing but sympathy for a family to which you belong," Mr. Osmond answered, with a laugh which, though it had something of a mocking ring, had also a finer patience. "I don't know what you mean by that! I'm sure she'll see no harm in me but what you tell her. I'm better than he says, Miss Archer," the Countess went on. "I'm only rather an idiot and a bore.
Never, even in the summer days, was he allowed to go beyond the Castle walls; and his guardians would fain have had it supposed that the Castle did not contain any such guest. Osmond did not give him so much of his company as usual, but was always at work in the armourer's forge a low, vaulted chamber, opening into the Castle court.
The two words in the language I most respect are Yes and No. If Isabel wants to marry Mr. Osmond she'll do so in spite of all your comparisons. Let her alone to find a fine one herself for anything she undertakes. I know very little about the young man in America; I don't think she spends much of her time in thinking of him, and I suspect he has got tired of waiting for her.
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