y he couldn't like her style, her shrillness, her egotism,
her violations of taste and above all of truth: she acted badly on his
nerves, she was not HIS sort of woman. What was his sort of woman? Oh,
the very opposite of the Countess, a woman to whom the truth should be
habitually sacred. Isabel was unable to estimate the number of times her
visitor had, in half an hour, profaned it: the Countess indeed had
given her an impression of rather silly sincerity. She had talked almost
exclusively about herself; how much she should like to know Miss Archer;
how thankful she should be for a real friend; how base the people in
Florence were; how tired she was of the place; how much she should
like to live somewhere else--in Paris, in London, in Washington; how
impossible it was to get anything nice to wear in Italy except a little
old lace; how dear the world was growing everywhere; what a life of
suffering and privation she had led. Madame Merle listened with interest
to Isabel's account of this passage, but she had not needed it to feel
exempt from anxiety. On the whole she was not afraid of the Countess,
and she could afford to do what was altogether best--not to appear so.

Isabel had meanwhile another visitor, whom it was not, even behind her
back, so easy a matter to patronise. Henrietta Stackpole, who had left
Paris after Mrs. Touchett's departure for San Remo and had worked her
way down, as she said, through the cities of North Italy, reached the
banks of the Arno about the middle of May. Madame Merle surveyed her
with a single glance, took her in from head to foot, and after a pang
of despair determined to endure her. She determined indeed to delight
in her. She mightn't be inhaled as a rose, but she might be grasped as
a nettle. Madame Merle genially squeezed her into insignificance, and
Isabel felt that in foreseeing this liberality she had done justice to
her friend's intelligence. Henrietta's arrival had been announced by
Mr. Bantling, who, coming down from Nice while she was at Venice, and
expecting to find her in Florence, which she had not yet reached, called
at Palazzo Crescentini to express his disappointment. Henrietta's own
advent occurred two days later and produced in Mr. Bantling an emotion
amply accounted for by the fact that he had not seen her since the
termination of the episode at Versailles. The humorous view of his
situation was generally taken, but it was uttered only by Ralph
Touchett, who, in the