s better; but
the local doctor was with him, and much light was expected from this
gentleman's consultation with Sir Matthew Hope.

"I suppose you two ladies have made acquaintance," she pursued. "If you
haven't I recommend you to do so; for so long as we continue--Ralph and
I--to cluster about Mr. Touchett's bed you're not likely to have much
society but each other."

"I know nothing about you but that you're a great musician," Isabel said
to the visitor.

"There's a good deal more than that to know," Mrs. Touchett affirmed in
her little dry tone.

"A very little of it, I am sure, will content Miss Archer!" the lady
exclaimed with a light laugh. "I'm an old friend of your aunt's.
I've lived much in Florence. I'm Madame Merle." She made this last
announcement as if she were referring to a person of tolerably distinct
identity. For Isabel, however, it represented little; she could only
continue to feel that Madame Merle had as charming a manner as any she
had ever encountered.

"She's not a foreigner in spite of her name," said Mrs. Touchett.

"She was born--I always forget where you were born."

"It's hardly worth while then I should tell you."

"On the contrary," said Mrs. Touchett, who rarely missed a logical
point; "if I remembered your telling me would be quite superfluous."

Madame Merle glanced at Isabel with a sort of world-wide smile, a
thing that over-reached frontiers. "I was born under the shadow of the
national banner."

"She's too fond of mystery," said Mrs. Touchett; "that's her great
fault."

"Ah," exclaimed Madame Merle, "I've great faults, but I don't think
that's one of then; it certainly isn't the greatest. I came into the
world in the Brooklyn navy-yard. My father was a high officer in the
United States Navy, and had a post--a post of responsibility--in that
establishment at the time. I suppose I ought to love the sea, but I hate
it. That's why I don't return to America. I love the land; the great
thing is to love something."

Isabel, as a dispassionate witness, had not been struck with the
force of Mrs. Touchett's characterisation of her visitor, who had an
expressive, communicative, responsive face, by no means of the sort
which, to Isabel's mind, suggested a secretive disposition. It was a
face that told of an amplitude of nature and of quick and free motions
and, though it had no regular beauty, was in the highest degree engaging
and attaching. Madame Merle was a tall, fair, smoot