discover a fault in her."

"Perhaps not. But I dare say I shan't miss it."

"She knows absolutely everything on earth there is to know," said Mrs.
Touchett.

Isabel after this observed to their companion that she hoped she knew
Mrs. Touchett considered she hadn't a speck on her perfection. On which
"I'm obliged to you," Madame Merle replied, "but I'm afraid your aunt
imagines, or at least alludes to, no aberrations that the clock-face
doesn't register."

"So that you mean you've a wild side that's unknown to her?"

"Ah no, I fear my darkest sides are my tamest. I mean that having no
faults, for your aunt, means that one's never late for dinner--that is
for her dinner. I was not late, by the way, the other day, when you
came back from London; the clock was just at eight when I came into the
drawing-room: it was the rest of you that were before the time. It means
that one answers a letter the day one gets it and that when one comes to
stay with her one doesn't bring too much luggage and is careful not to
be taken ill. For Mrs. Touchett those things constitute virtue; it's a
blessing to be able to reduce it to its elements."

Madame Merle's own conversation, it will be perceived, was enriched with
bold, free touches of criticism, which, even when they had a restrictive
effect, never struck Isabel as ill-natured. It couldn't occur to the
girl for instance that Mrs. Touchett's accomplished guest was abusing
her; and this for very good reasons. In the first place Isabel rose
eagerly to the sense of her shades; in the second Madame Merle implied
that there was a great deal more to say; and it was clear in the
third that for a person to speak to one without ceremony of one's near
relations was an agreeable sign of that person's intimacy with one's
self. These signs of deep communion multiplied as the days elapsed, and
there was none of which Isabel was more sensible than of her companion's
preference for making Miss Archer herself a topic. Though she referred
frequently to the incidents of her own career she never lingered upon
them; she was as little of a gross egotist as she was of a flat gossip.

"I'm old and stale and faded," she said more than once; "I'm of no
more interest than last week's newspaper. You're young and fresh and of
to-day; you've the great thing--you've actuality. I once had it--we all
have it for an hour. You, however, will have it for longer. Let us talk
about you then; you can say nothing I shall