When Madame Merle was neither writing, nor painting, nor touching
the piano, she was usually employed upon wonderful tasks of rich
embroidery, cushions, curtains, decorations for the chimney-piece;
an art in which her bold, free invention was as noted as the agility
of her needle. She was never idle, for when engaged in none of the
ways I have mentioned she was either reading (she appeared to Isabel
to read "everything important"), or walking out, or playing patience
with the cards, or talking with her fellow inmates. And with all
this she had always the social quality, was never rudely absent and
yet never too seated. She laid down her pastimes as easily as she took
them up; she worked and talked at the same time, and appeared to
impute scant worth to anything she did. She gave away her sketches and
tapestries; she rose from the piano or remained there, according to
the convenience of her auditors, which she always unerringly
divined. She was in short the most comfortable, profitable, amenable
person to live with. If for Isabel she had a fault it was that she was
not natural; by which the girl meant, not that she was either affected
or pretentious, since from these vulgar vices no woman could have been
more exempt, but that her nature had been too much overlaid by
custom and her angles too much rubbed away.
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