VOLUME II
43. CHAPTER XLIII
(continued)
Isabel turned away; Pansy was about to be restored to her, and
she welcomed the diversion. We know how much she liked Lord
Warburton; she thought him pleasanter even than the sum of his
merits warranted; there was something in his friendship that
appeared a kind of resource in case of indefinite need; it was
like having a large balance at the bank. She felt happier when he
was in the room; there was something reassuring in his approach;
the sound of his voice reminded her of the beneficence of nature.
Yet for all that it didn't suit her that he should be too near
her, that he should take too much of her good-will for granted.
She was afraid of that; she averted herself from it; she wished
he wouldn't. She felt that if he should come too near, as it
were, it might be in her to flash out and bid him keep his
distance. Pansy came back to Isabel with another rent in her
skirt, which was the inevitable consequence of the first and
which she displayed to Isabel with serious eyes. There were too
many gentlemen in uniform; they wore those dreadful spurs, which
were fatal to the dresses of little maids. It hereupon became
apparent that the resources of women are innumerable. Isabel
devoted herself to Pansy's desecrated drapery; she fumbled for a
pin and repaired the injury; she smiled and listened to her
account of her adventures. Her attention, her sympathy were
immediate and active; and they were in direct proportion to a
sentiment with which they were in no way connected--a lively
conjecture as to whether Lord Warburton might be trying to make
love to her. It was not simply his words just then; it was others
as well; it was the reference and the continuity. This was what
she thought about while she pinned up Pansy's dress. If it were
so, as she feared, he was of course unwitting; he himself had not
taken account of his intention. But this made it none the more
auspicious, made the situation none less impossible. The sooner
he should get back into right relations with things the better.
He immediately began to talk to Pansy--on whom it was certainly
mystifying to see that he dropped a smile of chastened devotion.
Pansy replied, as usual, with a little air of conscientious
aspiration; he had to bend toward her a good deal in conversation,
and her eyes, as usual, wandered up and down his robust person as
if he had offered it to her for exhibition. She always seemed a
little frightened; yet her fright was not of the painful
character that suggests dislike; on the contrary, she looked as
if she knew that he knew she liked him. Isabel left them together
a little and wandered toward a friend whom she saw near and with
whom she talked till the music of the following dance began, for
which she knew Pansy to be also engaged. The girl joined her
presently, with a little fluttered flush, and Isabel, who
scrupulously took Osmond's view of his daughter's complete
dependence, consigned her, as a precious and momentary loan, to
her appointed partner. About all this matter she had her own
imaginations, her own reserves; there were moments when Pansy's
extreme adhesiveness made each of them, to her sense, look
foolish. But Osmond had given her a sort of tableau of her
position as his daughter's duenna, which consisted of gracious
alternations of concession and contraction; and there were
directions of his which she liked to think she obeyed to the
letter. Perhaps, as regards some of them, it was because her
doing so appeared to reduce them to the absurd.
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