‘My good little Pansy,’ said Isabel gently, ‘I shall be ever so kind to you.’ A vague, inconsequent vision of her coming in some odd way to need it had intervened with the effect of a chill.

‘Very well then, I’ve nothing to fear,’ the child returned with her note of prepared promptitude. What teaching she had had, it seemed to suggest—or what penalties for non-performance she dreaded!

Her description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the Countess Gemini was further than ever from having folded her wings. She entered the room with a flutter through the air and kissed Isabel first on the forehead and then on each cheek as if according to some ancient prescribed rite. She drew the visitor to a sofa and, looking at her with a variety of turns of the head, began to talk very much as if, seated brush in hand before an easel, she were applying a series of considered touches to a composition of figures already sketched in. ‘If you expect me to congratulate you I must beg you to excuse me. I don’t suppose you care if I do or not; I believe you’re supposed not to care—through being so clever—for all sorts of ordinary things. But I care myself if I tell fibs; I never tell them unless there’s something rather good to be gained. I don’t see what’s to be gained with you—especially as you wouldn’t believe me. I don’t make professions any more than I make paper flowers or flouncey lampshades—I don’t know how. My lampshades would be sure to take fire, my roses and my fibs to be larger than life. I’m very glad for my own sake that you’re to marry Osmond; but I won’t pretend I’m glad for yours. You’re very brilliant—you know that’s the way you’re always spoken of; you’re an heiress and very good-looking and original, not banal;¹ so it’s a good thing to have you in the family. Our family’s very good, you know; Osmond will have told you that; and my mother was rather distinguished—she was called the American Corinne. But we’re dreadfully fallen, I think, and perhaps you’ll pick us up. I’ve great confidence in you; there are ever so many things I want to talk to you about. I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think they ought to make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap. I suppose Pansy oughtn’t to hear all this; but that’s what she has come to me for—to acquire the tone of society. There’s no harm in her knowing what horrors she may be in for. When first I got an idea that my brother had designs on you I thought of writing to you, to recommend you, in the strongest terms, not to listen to him. Then I thought it would be disloyal, and I hate anything of that kind. Besides, as I say, I was enchanted for myself; and after all I’m very selfish. By the way, you won’t respect me, not one little mite, and we shall never be intimate. I should like it, but you won’t. Some day, all the same, we shall be better friends than you will believe at first. My husband will come and see you, though, as you probably know, he’s on no sort of terms with Osmond. He’s very fond of going to see pretty women, but I’m not afraid of you. In the first place I don’t care what he does. In the second, you won’t care a straw for him; he won’t be a bit, at any time, your affair, and, stupid as he is, he’ll see you’re not his. Some day, if you can stand it, I’ll tell you all about him. Do you think my niece ought to go out of the room? Pansy, go and practise a little in my boudoir.’

‘Let her stay, please,’ said Isabel. ‘I would rather hear nothing that Pansy may not!’