He lingered a moment and gave a glance at Isabel. ‘You ought to be very happy—you’ve got a guardian angel.’

‘I’m sure I shall be happy,’ said Pansy in the tone of a person whose certainties were always cheerful.

‘Such a conviction as that will take you a great way. But if it should ever fail you, remember—remember—’ And her interlocutor stammered a little. ‘Think of me sometimes, you know!’ he said with a vague laugh. Then he shook hands with Isabel in silence, and presently he was gone.

When he had left the room she expected an effusion of tears from her stepdaughter; but Pansy in fact treated her to something very different.

‘I think you are my guardian angel!’ she exclaimed very sweetly.

Isabel shook her head. ‘I’m not an angel of any kind. I’m at the most your good friend.’

‘You’re a very good friend then—to have asked papa to be gentle with me.’

‘I’ve asked your father nothing,’ said Isabel, wondering.

‘He told me just now to come to the drawing-room, and then he gave me a very kind kiss.’

‘Ah,’ said Isabel, ‘that was quite his own idea!’

She recognized the idea perfectly; it was very characteristic, and she was to see a great deal more of it. Even with Pansy he couldn’t put himself the least in the wrong. They were dining out that day, and after their dinner they went to another entertainment; so that it was not till late in the evening that Isabel saw him alone. When Pansy kissed him before going to bed he returned her embrace with even more than his usual munificence, and Isabel wondered if he meant it as a hint that his daughter had been injured by the machinations of her stepmother. It was a partial expression, at any rate, of what he continued to expect of his wife. She was about to follow Pansy, but he remarked that he wished she would remain; he had something to say to her. Then he walked about the drawing-room a little, while she stood waiting in her cloak.

‘I don’t understand what you wish to do,’ he said in a moment. ‘I should like to know—so that I may know how to act.’

‘Just now I wish to go to bed. I’m very tired.’

‘Sit down and rest; I shall not keep you long. Not there—take a comfortable place.’ And he arranged a multitude of cushions that were scattered in picturesque disorder upon a vast divan. This was not, however, where she seated herself; she dropped into the nearest chair. The fire had gone out; the lights in the great room were few. She drew her cloak about her; she felt mortally cold. ‘I think you’re trying to humiliate me,’ Osmond went on. ‘It’s a most absurd undertaking.’

‘I haven’t the least idea what you mean,’ she returned.

‘You’ve played a very deep game; you’ve managed it beautifully.’

‘What is it that I’ve managed?’

‘You’ve not quite settled it, however; we shall see him again.’

And he stopped in front of her, with his hands in his pockets, looking down at her thoughtfully, in his usual way, which seemed meant to let her know that she was not an object, but only a rather disagreeable incident, of thought.