Madame
Merle listened with interest to Isabel's account of this passage,
but she had not needed it to feel exempt from anxiety. On the whole
she was not afraid of the Countess, and she could afford to do what
was altogether best- not to appear so.
Isabel had meanwhile another visitor, whom it was not, even behind
her back, so easy a matter to patronize. Henrietta Stackpole, who
had left Paris after Mrs. Touchett's departure for San Remo and had
worked her way down, as she said, through the cities of North Italy,
reached the banks of the Arno about the middle of May. Madame Merle
surveyed her with a single glance, took her in from head to foot,
and after a pang of despair determined to endure her. She determined
indeed to delight in her. She mightn't be inhaled as a rose, but she
might be grasped as a nettle. Madame Merle genially squeezed her
into insignificance, and Isabel felt that in foreseeing this
liberality she had done justice to her friend's intelligence.
Henrietta's arrival had been announced by Mr. Bantling, who, coming
down from Nice while she was at Venice, and expecting to find her in
Florence, which she had not yet reached, called at Palazzo Crescentini
to express his disappointment.
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