Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it into her pocket, she went straight to the door of her husband’s study. Here she again paused an instant, after which she opened the door and went in. Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a folio volume before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open at a page of small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he had been copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of water-colours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had already transferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted disk. His back was turned toward the door, but he recognised his wife without looking round.
“Excuse me for disturbing you,” she said.
“When I come to your room I always knock,” he answered, going on with his work.
“I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin’s dying.”
“Ah, I don’t believe that,” said Osmond, looking at his drawing through a magnifying glass. “He was dying when we married; he’ll outlive us all.”
Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of her own intention “My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to Gardencourt.”
“Why must you go to Gardencourt?” Osmond asked in the tone of impartial curiosity.
“To see Ralph before he dies.”
To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his chief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook no negligence. “I don’t see the need of it,” he said at last. “He came to see you here. I didn’t like that; I thought his being in Rome a great mistake. But I tolerated it because it was to be the last time you should see him. Now you tell me it’s not to have been the last. Ah, you’re not grateful!”
“What am I to be grateful for?”