Isabel asked.

"Because I'm an old frump and you're a beautiful young woman."

"Granting all that, you've not promised."

"How much you think of your promises!" said the elder woman in mild
mockery.

"I think a great deal of my promises. Does that surprise you?"

"You're right," Madame Merle audibly reflected. "I really think you wish
to be kind to the child."

"I wish very much to be kind to her."

"Go and see her then; no one will be the wiser. And tell her I'd have
come if you hadn't. Or rather," Madame Merle added, "DON'T tell her. She
won't care."

As Isabel drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the winding
way which led to Mr. Osmond's hill-top, she wondered what her friend had
meant by no one's being the wiser. Once in a while, at large intervals,
this lady, whose voyaging discretion, as a general thing, was rather of
the open sea than of the risky channel, dropped a remark of ambiguous
quality, struck a note that sounded false. What cared Isabel Archer for
the vulgar judgements of obscure people? and did Madame Merle suppose
that she was capable of doing a thing at all if it had to be sneakingly
done? Of course not: she must have meant something else--something which
in the press of the hours that preceded her departure she had not had
time to explain. Isabel would return to this some day; there were sorts
of things as to which she liked to be clear. She heard Pansy strumming
at the piano in another place as she herself was ushered into Mr.
Osmond's drawing-room; the little girl was "practising," and Isabel was
pleased to think she performed this duty with rigour. She immediately
came in, smoothing down her frock, and did the honours of her father's
house with a wide-eyed earnestness of courtesy. Isabel sat there half an
hour, and Pansy rose to the occasion as the small, winged fairy in the
pantomime soars by the aid of the dissimulated wire--not chattering, but
conversing, and showing the same respectful interest in Isabel's affairs
that Isabel was so good as to take in hers. Isabel wondered at her;
she had never had so directly presented to her nose the white flower
of cultivated sweetness. How well the child had been taught, said our
admiring young woman; how prettily she had been directed and fashioned;
and yet how simple, how natural, how innocent she had been kept! Isabel
was fond, ever, of the question of character and quality, of sounding,
as who should say, the deep personal mystery