n I know what?"

"That she's all right."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, that we've come to an understanding."

"She's all wrong," said Isabel. "It won't do."

Poor Rosier gazed at her half-pleadingly, half-angrily; a sudden flush
testified to his sense of injury. "I've never been treated so," he said.
"What is there against me, after all? That's not the way I'm usually
considered. I could have married twenty times."

"It's a pity you didn't. I don't mean twenty times, but once,
comfortably," Isabel added, smiling kindly. "You're not rich enough for
Pansy."

"She doesn't care a straw for one's money."

"No, but her father does."

"Ah yes, he has proved that!" cried the young man.

Isabel got up, turning away from him, leaving her old lady without
ceremony; and he occupied himself for the next ten minutes in pretending
to look at Gilbert Osmond's collection of miniatures, which were neatly
arranged on a series of small velvet screens. But he looked without
seeing; his cheek burned; he was too full of his sense of injury. It was
certain that he had never been treated that way before; he was not used
to being thought not good enough. He knew how good he was, and if such
a fallacy had not been so pernicious he could have laughed at it. He
searched again for Pansy, but she had disappeared, and his main desire
was now to get out of the house. Before doing so he spoke once more to
Isabel; it was not agreeable to him to reflect that he had just said a
rude thing to her--the only point that would now justify a low view of
him.

"I referred to Mr. Osmond as I shouldn't have done, a while ago," he
began. "But you must remember my situation."

"I don't remember what you said," she answered coldly.

"Ah, you're offended, and now you'll never help me."

She was silent an instant, and then with a change of tone: "It's not
that I won't; I simply can't!" Her manner was almost passionate.

"If you COULD, just a little, I'd never again speak of your husband save
as an angel."

"The inducement's great," said Isabel gravely--inscrutably, as he
afterwards, to himself, called it; and she gave him, straight in the
eyes, a look which was also inscrutable. It made him remember somehow
that he had known her as a child; and yet it was keener than he liked,
and he took himself off.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

He went to see Madame Merle on the morrow, and to his surprise she let
him off rather easily. But she made him promise