it in the vulgar sense—that she boasts, overstates, gives too fine an account of herself. I mean literally that she pushes the search for perfection too far—that her merits are in themselves overstrained. She is too good, too kind, too clever, too learned, too accomplished, too everything. She is too complete, in a word. I confess to you that she acts a little on my nerves, and that I feel about her a good deal as that intensely human Athenian felt about Aristides the Just."
Isabel looked hard at her cousin; but the mocking spirit, if it lurked in his words, failed on this occasion to peep from his eye. "Do you wish Madame Merle to be banished?" she inquired.
"By no means. She is much too good company. I delight in Madame Merle," said Ralph Touchett, simply.
'You are very odious, sir!" Isabel exclaimed. And then she asked him if he knew anything that was not to the honour of her brilliant friend.
"Nothing whatever. Don't you see that is just what I mean? Upon the character of every one else you may find some little black speck; if I were to take half-an-hour to it, some day, I have no doubt I should be able to find one on yours. For my own, of course, I am spotted like a leopard. But on Madame Merle's nothing, nothing, nothing!"
"That is just what I think!" said Isabel, with a toss of her head. "That is why I like her so much."
"She is a capital person for you to know. Since you wish to see the world you couldn't have a better guide."
"I suppose you mean by that that she is worldly?"
"Worldly? No," said Ralph, "she is the world itself!"
It had certainly not, as Isabel for the moment took it into her head to believe, been a refinement of malice in him to say
