"It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I
haven't gone in for that."
"It rather surprises me."
"You ought to understand it, Mrs. Osmond. But I do want to marry,"
he added more simply.
"It ought to be very easy," Isabel said, rising-after which she
reflected, with a pang perhaps too visible, that she was hardly the
person to say this. It was perhaps because Lord Warburton divined
the pang that he generously forbore to call her attention to her not
having contributed then to the facility.
Edward Rosier had meanwhile seated himself on an ottoman beside
Pansy's tea-table. He pretended at first to talk to her about trifles,
and she asked him who was the new gentleman conversing with her
stepmother.
"He's an English lord," said Rosier. "I don't know more."
"I wonder if he'll have some tea. The English are so fond of tea."
"Never mind that; I've something particular to say to you."
"Don't speak so loud-every one will hear," said Pansy.
"They won't hear if you continue to look that way; as if your only
thought in life was the wish the kettle would boil."
"It has just been filled; the servants never know!"-she sighed
with the weight of her responsibility.
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