‘Ah, with Madame Merle you may go anywhere, de confiance,’³ said Ralph. ‘She knows none but the best people.’

Isabel said no more about Mr Osmond, but she presently remarked to her cousin that she was not satisfied with his tone about Madame Merle. ‘It seems to me you insinuate things about her. I don’t know what you mean, but if you’ve any grounds for disliking her I think you should either mention them frankly or else say nothing at all.’

Ralph, however, resented this charge with more apparent earnestness than he commonly used. ‘I speak of Madame Merle exactly as I speak to her: with an even exaggerated respect.’

‘Exaggerated, precisely. That’s what I complain of.’

‘I do so because Madame Merle’s merits are exaggerated.’

‘By whom, pray? By me? If so I do her a poor service.’

‘No, no; by herself.’

‘Ah, I protest!’ Isabel earnestly cried. ‘If ever there was a woman who made small claims—!’

‘You put your finger on it,’ Ralph interrupted. ‘Her modesty’s exaggerated. She has no business with small claims—she has a perfect right to make large ones.’

‘Her merits are large then. You contradict yourself.’

‘Her merits are immense,’ said Ralph. ‘She’s indescribably blameless; a pathless desert of virtue; the only woman I know who never gives one a chance.’

‘A chance for what?’

‘Well, say to call her a fool! She’s the only woman I know who has but that one little fault.’

Isabel turned away with impatience. ‘I don’t understand you; you’re too paradoxical for my plain mind.’

‘Let me explain. When I say she exaggerates I don’t mean it in the vulgar sense—that she boasts, overstates, gives too fine an account of herself. I mean literally that she pushes the search for perfection too far—that her merits are in themselves overstrained. She’s too good, too kind, too clever, too learned, too accomplished, too everything. She’s too complete, in a word. I confess to you that she acts on my nerves and that I feel about her a good deal as that intensely human Athenian felt about Aristides the Just.’⁴

Isabel looked hard at her cousin; but the mocking spirit, if it lurked in his words, failed on this occasion to peep from his face. ‘Do you wish Madame Merle to be banished?’

‘By no means. She’s much too good company. I delight in Madame Merle,’ said Ralph Touchett simply.

‘You’re very odious, sir!’ Isabel exclaimed. And then she asked him if he knew anything that was not to the honour of her brilliant friend.

‘Nothing whatever. Don’t you see that’s just what I mean? On the character of every one else you may find some little black speck; if I were to take half an hour to it, some day, I’ve no doubt I should be able to find one on yours. For my own, of course, I’m spotted like a leopard. But on Madame Merle’s nothing, nothing, nothing!’

‘That’s just what I think!’ said Isabel with a toss of her head. ‘That is why I like her so much.’