“You? Oh, with you it succeeded, because you—you were exceptional.”
“I don’t see why,” said Isabel, who, however, was not sure there was not some truth in the speech.
Mr. Osmond didn’t explain; he simply went on: “If I thought it would make her resemble you to join a social group in Rome I’d take her there to-morrow.”
“Don’t make her resemble me,” said Isabel. “Keep her like herself.”
“I might send her to my sister,” Mr. Osmond observed. He had almost the air of asking advice; he seemed to like to talk over his domestic matters with Miss Archer.
“Yes,” she concurred; “I think that wouldn’t do much towards making her resemble me!”
After she had left Florence Gilbert Osmond met Madame Merle at the Countess Gemini’s. There were other people present; the Countess’s drawing-room was usually well filled, and the talk had been general, but after a while Osmond left his place and came and sat on an ottoman half-behind, half-beside Madame Merle’s chair. “She wants me to go to Rome with her,” he remarked in a low voice.
“To go with her?”
“To be there while she’s there. She proposed it.
“I suppose you mean that you proposed it and she assented.”