Certainly, on the whole, Isabel had never encountered a more agreeable
and interesting figure than Madame Merle; she had never met a person
having less of that fault which is the principal obstacle to
friendship- the air of reproducing the more tiresome, the stale, the
too-familiar parts of one's own character. The gates of the girl's
confidence were opened wider than they had ever been; she said
things to this amiable auditress that she had not yet said to any one.
Sometimes she took alarm at her candour: it was as if she had given to
a comparative stranger the key to her cabinet of jewels. These
spiritual gems were the only ones of any magnitude that Isabel
possessed, but there was all the greater reason for their being
carefully guarded. Afterwards, however, she always remembered that one
should never regret a generous error and that if Madame Merle had
not the merits she attributed to her, so much the worse for Madame
Merle. There was no doubt she had great merits- she was charming,
sympathetic, intelligent, cultivated. More than this (for it had not
been Isabel's ill-fortune to go through life without meeting in her
own sex several persons of whom no less could fairly be said), she was
rare, superior and preeminent.
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