Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/317

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 309 more primitive sentiment a sentiment which answered all questions, satisfied all needs, solved all difficulties. It sim- plified the future at. a stroke, it came down from above, like the light of the stars, and it needed no explanation. There was explanation enough in the fact that he was her lover, her own, and that she was able to be of use to him. She could marry him with a kind of pride; she was not only taking, but giving. He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the Cascine Pansy who was very little taller than a year before, and not much older. That she would always be a child was the convic- tion expressed by her father, who held her by the hand when she was in her sixteenth year, and told her to go and play while he sat down a while with the pretty lady. Pansy wore a short dress and a long coat ; her hat always seemed too big for her. She amused herself with walking off, with quick, short steps, to the end of the alley, and then walking back with a smile that seemed an appeal for approbation. Isabel gave her approbation in abundance, and it was of that demonstrated personal kind which the child's affectionate nature craved. She watched her development with a kind of amused suspense ; Pansy had already become a little daughter. She was treated so completely as a child that Osmond had not yet explained to her the new relation in which he stood to the elegant Miss Archer. " She doesn't know," he said to Isabel; "she doesn't suspect; she thinks it perfectly natural that you and I should come and walk here together, simply as good friends. There seems to me something enchantingly innocent in that ; it's the way I like her to be. No, I am not a failure, as I used to think ; I have succeeded in two things. I am to marry the woman I adore, and I have brought up my child as I wished, in the old way." He was very fond, in all things, of the " old way ; " that had struck Isabel as an element in the refinement of his character. " It seems to me you will not know whether you have suc- ceeded until you have told her," she said. " You must see how she takes your news. She may be horrified she may be jealous." " I am not afraid of that ; she is too fond of you on her own account. I should like to leave her in the dark a little longer to see if it will come into her head that if we are not engaged we ought to be." Isabel was impressed by Osmond's esthetic relish of Pansy's innocence her own appreciation of it being more moral. She