--been so clever as when he observed, in petto, that under the
guise of caring only for intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively for
the world. Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he was
its very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his only
measure of success. He lived with his eye on it from morning till night,
and the world was so stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything
he did was pose--pose so subtly considered that if one were not on the
lookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived
so much in the land of consideration. His tastes, his studies, his
accomplishments, his collections, were all for a purpose. His life on
his hill-top at Florence had been the conscious attitude of years. His
solitude, his ennui, his love for his daughter, his good manners, his
bad manners, were so many features of a mental image constantly present
to him as a model of impertinence and mystification. His ambition was
not to please the world, but to please himself by exciting the world's
curiosity and then declining to satisfy it. It had made him feel great,
ever, to play the world a trick. The thing he had done in his life most
directly to please himself was his marrying Miss Archer; though in this
case indeed the gullible world was in a manner embodied in poor Isabel,
who had been mystified to the top of her bent. Ralph of course found
a fitness in being consistent; he had embraced a creed, and as he had
suffered for it he could not in honour forsake it. I give this little
sketch of its articles for what they may at the time have been worth.
It was certain that he was very skilful in fitting the facts to his
theory--even the fact that during the month he spent in Rome at this
period the husband of the woman he loved appeared to regard him not in
the least as an enemy.

For Gilbert Osmond Ralph had not now that importance. It was not that he
had the importance of a friend; it was rather that he had none at all.
He was Isabel's cousin and he was rather unpleasantly ill--it was on
this basis that Osmond treated with him. He made the proper enquiries,
asked about his health, about Mrs. Touchett, about his opinion of winter
climates, whether he were comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, on
the few occasions of their meeting, not a word that was not necessary;
but his manner had always the urbanity proper to conscious success in
the presence of conscious failure. For all this