prepared to depart. She was checked, however, on her progress to the door, by an inconsequent request from Isabel.

‘All the same, you know, be kind to him.’

She lifted her shoulders and eyebrows and stood looking at her friend. ‘I don’t understand your contradictions! Decidedly I shan’t be kind to him, for it will be a false kindness. I want to see her married to Lord Warburton.’

‘You had better wait till he asks her.’

‘If what you say’s true, he’ll ask her. Especially,’ said Madame Merle in a moment, ‘if you make him.’

‘If I make him?’

‘It’s quite in your power. You’ve great influence with him.’

Isabel frowned a little. ‘Where did you learn that?’

‘Mrs Touchett told me. Not you—never!’ said Madame Merle, smiling.

‘I certainly never told you anything of the sort.’

‘You might have done so—so far as opportunity went—when we were by way of being confidential with each other. But you really told me very little; I’ve often thought so since.’

Isabel had thought so too, and sometimes with a certain satisfaction. But she didn’t admit it now—perhaps because she wished not to appear to exult in it. ‘You seem to have had an excellent informant in my aunt,’ she simply returned.

‘She let me know you had declined an offer of marriage from Lord Warburton, because she was greatly vexed and was full of the subject. Of course I think you’ve done better in doing as you did. But if you wouldn’t marry Lord Warburton yourself, make him the reparation of helping him to marry some one else.’

Isabel listened to this with a face that persisted in not reflecting the bright expressiveness of Madame Merle’s. But in a moment she said, reasonably and gently enough: ‘I should be very glad indeed if, as regards Pansy, it could be arranged.’ Upon which her companion, who seemed to regard this as a speech of good omen, embraced her more tenderly than might have been expected and triumphantly withdrew.