She trusted she should learn in time; it would be very interesting to learn.If it was provincial to have that harmony, what then was the finish of the capital? And she could put this question in spite of so feeling her host a sly personage; since such shyness as his- the shyness of ticklish nerves and fine perceptions- was perfectly consistent with the best breeding.Indeed it was almost a proof of standards and touchstones other than the vulgar: he must be so sure the vulgar would be first on the ground.He wasn't a man of easy assurance, who chatted and gossiped with the fluency of a superficial nature; he was critical of himself as well as of others, and, exacting a good deal of others, to think them agreeable, probably took a rather ironical view of what he himself offered: a proof into the bargain that he was not grossly conceited.If he had not been shy he wouldn't have effected that gradual, subtle, successful conversion of it to which she owed both what pleased her in him and what mystified her.If he had suddenly asked her what she thought of the Countess Gemini, that was doubtless a proof that he was interested in her; it could scarcely be as a help to knowledge of his own sister.
That he should be so interested showed an enquiring mind; but it was a little singular he should sacrifice his fraternal feeling to his curiosity.This was the most eccentric thing he had done.
There were two other rooms, beyond the one in which she had been received, equally full of romantic objects, and in these apartments Isabel spent a quarter of an hour.Everything was in the last degree curious and precious, and Mr.Osmond continued to be the kindest of ciceroni as he led her from one fine piece to another and still held his little girl by the hand.His kindness almost surprised our young friend, who wondered why he should take so much trouble for her; and she was oppressed at last with the accumulation of beauty and knowledge to which she found herself introduced.There was enough for the present; she had ceased to attend to what he said; she listened to him with attentive eyes, but was not thinking of what he told her.He probably thought her quicker, cleverer in every way, more prepared, than she was.Madame Merle would have pleasantly exaggerated; which was a pity, because in the end he would be sure to find out, and then perhaps even her real intelligence wouldn't reconcile him to his mistake.A part of Isabel's fatigue came from the effort to appear as intelligent as she believed Madame Merle had described her, and from the fear (very unusual with her) of exposing- not her ignorance; for that she cared comparatively little- but her possible grossness of perception.It would have annoyed her to express a liking for something he, in his superior enlightenment, would think she oughtn't to like; or to pass by something at which the truly initiated mind would arrest itself.She had no wish to fall into that grotesqueness- in which she had seen women (and it was a warning) serenely, yet ignobly, flounder.She was very careful therefore as to what she said, as to what she noticed or failed to notice; more careful than she had ever been before.
They came back into the first of the rooms, where the tea had been served; but as the two other ladies were still on the terrace, and as Isabel had not yet been made acquainted with the view, the paramount distinction of the place, Mr.Osmond directed her steps into the garden without more delay.Madame Merle and the Countess had had chairs brought out, and as the afternoon was lovely the Countess proposed they should take their tea in the open air.Pansy therefore was sent to bid the servant bring out the preparations.The sun had got low, the golden light took a deeper tone, and on the mountains and the plain that stretched beneath them the masses of purple shadow glowed as richly as the places that were still exposed.The scene had an extraordinary charm.The air was almost solemnly still, and the large expanse of the landscape, with its gardenlike culture and nobleness of outline, its teeming valley and delicately-fretted hills, its peculiarly human-looking touches of habitation, lay there in splendid harmony and classic grace."You seem so well pleased that Ithink you can be trusted to come back," Osmond said as he led his companion to one of the angles of the terrace.
