h in the wrong--it being in
effect one of the disadvantages of expressing contempt that you cannot
enjoy at the same time the credit of expressing sympathy. Osmond held
to his credit, and yet he held to his objections--all of which were
elements difficult to reconcile. The right thing would have been that
Miss Stackpole should come to dine at Palazzo Roccanera once or twice,
so that (in spite of his superficial civility, always so great) she
might judge for herself how little pleasure it gave him. From the
moment, however, that both the ladies were so unaccommodating, there was
nothing for Osmond but to wish the lady from New York would take herself
off. It was surprising how little satisfaction he got from his wife's
friends; he took occasion to call Isabel's attention to it.

"You're certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish you might make
a new collection," he said to her one morning in reference to nothing
visible at the moment, but in a tone of ripe reflection which deprived
the remark of all brutal abruptness. "It's as if you had taken the
trouble to pick out the people in the world that I have least in common
with. Your cousin I have always thought a conceited ass--besides his
being the most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it's insufferably
tiresome that one can't tell him so; one must spare him on account of
his health. His health seems to me the best part of him; it gives him
privileges enjoyed by no one else. If he's so desperately ill there's
only one way to prove it; but he seems to have no mind for that. I can't
say much more for the great Warburton. When one really thinks of it,
the cool insolence of that performance was something rare! He comes and
looks at one's daughter as if she were a suite of apartments; he tries
the door-handles and looks out of the windows, raps on the walls and
almost thinks he'll take the place. Will you be so good as to draw up a
lease? Then, on the whole, he decides that the rooms are too small; he
doesn't think he could live on a third floor; he must look out for a
piano nobile. And he goes away after having got a month's lodging in the
poor little apartment for nothing. Miss Stackpole, however, is your most
wonderful invention. She strikes me as a kind of monster. One hasn't
a nerve in one's body that she doesn't set quivering. You know I never
have admitted that she's a woman. Do you know what she reminds me of? Of
a new steel pen--the most odious thing in nature. Sh