‘Ah my dear,’ she said, ‘you, who are so literary, do tell me some amusing book to read! Everything here’s of a dreariness—! Do you think this would do me any good?’

Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but without reading or understanding it. ‘I’m afraid I can’t advise you. I’ve had bad news. My cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying.’

The Countess threw down her book. ‘Ah, he was so simpatico. I’m awfully sorry for you.’

‘You would be sorrier still if you knew.’

‘What is there to know? You look very badly,’ the Countess added. ‘You must have been with Osmond.’

Half an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to an intimation that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy of her sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her present embarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at this lady’s fluttering attention. ‘I’ve been with Osmond,’ she said, while the Countess’s bright eyes glittered at her.

‘I’m sure then he has been odious!’ the Countess cried. ‘Did he say he was glad poor Mr Touchett’s dying?’

‘He said it’s impossible I should go to England.’

The Countess’s mind, when her interests were concerned, was agile; she already foresaw the extinction of any further brightness in her visit to Rome. Ralph Touchett would die, Isabel would go into mourning, and then there would be no more dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for a moment in her countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid, picturesque play of feature was her only tribute to disappointment. After all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she had already overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough for Isabel’s trouble to forget her own, and she saw that Isabel’s trouble was deep. It seemed deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the Countess had no hesitation in connecting her exasperating brother with the expression of her sister-in-law’s eyes. Her heart beat with an almost joyous expectation, for if she had wished to see Osmond overtopped the conditions looked favourable now. Of course if Isabel should go to England she herself would immediately leave Palazzo Roccanera; nothing would induce her to remain there with Osmond. Nevertheless she felt an immense desire to hear that Isabel would go to England. ‘Nothing’s impossible for you, my dear,’ she said caressingly. ‘Why else are you rich and clever and good?’

‘Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak.’

‘Why does Osmond say it’s impossible?’ the Countess asked in a tone which sufficiently declared that she couldn’t imagine.

From the moment she thus began to question her, however, Isabel drew back; she disengaged her hand, which the Countess had affectionately taken. But she answered this enquiry with frank bitterness. ‘Because we’re so happy together that we can’t separate even for a fortnight.’

‘Ah,’ cried the Countess while Isabel turned away, ‘when I want to make a journey my husband simply tells me I can have no money!’

Isabel went to her room, where she walked up and down for an hour. It may appear to some readers that she gave herself much trouble, and it is certain that for a woman of a high spirit she had allowed herself easily to be arrested. It seemed to her that only now she fully measured the great undertaking of matrimony. Marriage meant that in such a case as this, when one had to choose, one chose as a matter of course for one’s husband. ‘I’m afraid—yes, I’m afraid,’ she said to herself more than once, stopping short in her walk. But what she was afraid of was not her husband—his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not even her own later judgement of her conduct—a consideration which had often