It was there like a large sum stored in a bank-
which there was a terror in having to begin to spend. If she touched
it, it would all come out.
"I haven't the idea that it will matter much to you," said Osmond.
"I've too little to offer you. What I have- it's enough for me; but
it's not enough for you. I've neither fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic
advantages of any kind. So I offer nothing. I only tell you because
I think it can't offend you, and some day or other it may give you
pleasure. It gives me pleasure, I assure you," he went on, standing
there before her, considerately inclined to her, turning his hat,
which he had taken up, slowly round with a movement which had all
the decent tremor of awkwardness and none of its oddity, and
presenting to her his firm, refined, slightly ravaged face. "It
gives me no pain, because it's perfectly simple. For me you'll
always be the most important woman in the world."
Isabel looked at herself in this character- looked intently,
thinking she filled it with a certain grace. But what she said was not
an expression of any such complacency. "You don't offend me; but you
ought to remember that, without being offended, one may be incommoded,
troubled.
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