Madame Merle had always made the best of her for her brother's sake;
he appreciated any kindness shown to Amy, because (if it had to be
confessed for him) he rather felt she let down their common name.
Naturally he couldn't like her style, her shrillness, her egotism, her
violations of taste and above all of truth: she acted badly on his
nerves, she was not his sort of woman. What was his sort of woman? Oh,
the very opposite of the Countess, a woman to whom the truth should be
habitually sacred. Isabel was unable to estimate the number of times
her visitor had, in half an hour, profaned it: the Countess indeed had
given her an impression of rather silly sincerity. She had talked
almost exclusively about herself; how much she should like to know
Miss Archer; how thankful she should be for a real friend; how base
the people in Florence were; how tired she was of the place; how
much she should like to live somewhere else- in Paris, in London, in
Washington; how impossible it was to get anything nice to wear in
Italy except a little old lace; how dear the world was growing
everywhere; what a life of suffering and privation she had led.
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