g."

"That's not the convent. It's the child's nature."

"It's the combination, I think. She's as pure as a pearl."

"Why doesn't she come back with my flowers then?" Madame Merle asked.
"She's not in a hurry."

"We'll go and get them."

"She doesn't like me," the visitor murmured as she raised her parasol
and they passed into the garden.

CHAPTER XXIII

Madame Merle, who had come to Florence on Mrs. Touchett's arrival at
the invitation of this lady--Mrs. 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 reason
of this was perhaps that Isabel offered no resistance whatever to Madame
Merle's proposal. In Italy, as in England, the lady had a multitude of
friends, both among the natives of the country and its heterogeneous
visitors. She had mentioned to Isabel most of the people the girl would
find it well to "meet"--of course, she said, Isabel could know whomever
in the wide world she would--and had placed Mr. Osmond near the top of
the list. He was an old friend of her own; she had known him these dozen
years; he was one of the cleverest and most agreeable men--well, in
Europe simply. He was altogether above the respectable average; quite
another affair. He wasn't a professional charmer--far from it, and the
effect he produced depended a good deal on the state of his nerves and
his spirits. When not in the right mood he could fall as low as any one,
saved only by his looking at such hours rather like a demoralised prince
in exile. But if he cared or was interested or rightly challenged--just
exactly rightly it had to be--then one felt his cleverness and his
distinction. Those qualities didn't depend, in him, as in so many
people, on his not committing or exposing himself. He had his
perversities--which indeed Isabel would find to be the case with all the
men really worth knowing--and didn't cause his light to shine equally
for all persons. Madame Merle, however, thought she could undertake that
for Isabel he would be brilliant. He was easily bored, too easily, and
dull people always put him out; but a quick and cultivated girl like
Isabel would give him a stimulus which was too absent from his life. At
any rate he was a person not to miss. One