elieve, been a refinement of malice in him to say that he delighted in
Madame Merle. Ralph Touchett took his refreshment wherever he could find
it, and he would not have forgiven himself if he had been left wholly
unbeguiled by such a mistress of the social art. There are deep-lying
sympathies and antipathies, and it may have been that, in spite of the
administered justice she enjoyed at his hands, her absence from his
mother's house would not have made life barren to him. But Ralph
Touchett had learned more or less inscrutably to attend, and there could
have been nothing so "sustained" to attend to as the general performance
of Madame Merle. He tasted her in sips, he let her stand, with an
opportuneness she herself could not have surpassed. There were moments
when he felt almost sorry for her; and these, oddly enough, were the
moments when his kindness was least demonstrative. He was sure she had
been yearningly ambitious and that what she had visibly accomplished was
far below her secret measure. She had got herself into perfect training,
but had won none of the prizes. She was always plain Madame Merle,
the widow of a Swiss negociant, with a small income and a large
acquaintance, who stayed with people a great deal and was almost as
universally "liked" as some new volume of smooth twaddle. The contrast
between this position and any one of some half-dozen others that he
supposed to have at various moments engaged her hope had an element of
the tragical. His mother thought he got on beautifully with their genial
guest; to Mrs. Touchett's sense two persons who dealt so largely in
too-ingenious theories of conduct--that is of their own--would have much
in common. He had given due consideration to Isabel's intimacy with her
eminent friend, having long since made up his mind that he could not,
without opposition, keep his cousin to himself; and he made the best of
it, as he had done of worse things. He believed it would take care of
itself; it wouldn't last forever. Neither of these two superior persons
knew the other as well as she supposed, and when each had made an
important discovery or two there would be, if not a rupture, at least
a relaxation. Meanwhile he was quite willing to admit that the
conversation of the elder lady was an advantage to the younger, who had
a great deal to learn and would doubtless learn it better from Madame
Merle than from some other instructors of the young. It was not probable
that Isabel wou