effort not to be contemptible must be great."

"And how do you know I'm not weak?" Isabel asked.

"Ah," Ralph answered with a flush that the girl noticed, "if you are I'm
awfully sold!"

The charm of the Mediterranean coast only deepened for our heroine
on acquaintance, for it was the threshold of Italy, the gate of
admirations. Italy, as yet imperfectly seen and felt, stretched before
her as a land of promise, a land in which a love of the beautiful might
be comforted by endless knowledge. Whenever she strolled upon the shore
with her cousin--and she was the companion of his daily walk--she looked
across the sea, with longing eyes, to where she knew that Genoa lay. She
was glad to pause, however, on the edge of this larger adventure; there
was such a thrill even in the preliminary hovering. It affected her
moreover as a peaceful interlude, as a hush of the drum and fife in a
career which she had little warrant as yet for regarding as agitated,
but which nevertheless she was constantly picturing to herself by
the light of her hopes, her fears, her fancies, her ambitions, her
predilections, and which reflected these subjective accidents in
a manner sufficiently dramatic. Madame Merle had predicted to Mrs.
Touchett that after their young friend had put her hand into her pocket
half a dozen times she would be reconciled to the idea that it had been
filled by a munificent uncle; and the event justified, as it had so
often justified before, that lady's perspicacity. Ralph Touchett had
praised his cousin for being morally inflammable, that is for being
quick to take a hint that was meant as good advice. His advice had
perhaps helped the matter; she had at any rate before leaving San Remo
grown used to feeling rich. The consciousness in question found a
proper place in rather a dense little group of ideas that she had about
herself, and often it was by no means the least agreeable. It took
perpetually for granted a thousand good intentions. She lost herself in
a maze of visions; the fine things to be done by a rich, independent,
generous girl who took a large human view of occasions and obligations
were sublime in the mass. Her fortune therefore became to her mind a
part of her better self; it gave her importance, gave her even, to her
own imagination, a certain ideal beauty. What it did for her in the
imagination of others is another affair, and on this point we must also
touch in time. The visions I have just spoken of wer