His tastes, his studies,
his accomplishments, his collections, were all for a purpose. His life
on his hilltop at Florence had been the conscious attitude of years.
His solitude, his ennui, his love for his daughter, his good
manners, his bad manners, were so many features of a mental image
constantly present to him as a model of impertinence and
mystification. His ambition was not to please the world, but to please
himself by exciting the world's curiosity and then declining to
satisfy it. It had made him feel great, ever, to play the world a
trick. The thing he had done in his life most directly to please
himself was his marrying Miss Archer; though in this case indeed the
gullible world was in a manner embodied in poor Isabel, who had been
mystified to the top of her bent. Ralph of course found a fitness in
being consistent; he had embraced a creed, and as he had suffered
for it he could not in honour forsake it. I give this little sketch of
its articles for what they may at the time have been worth. It was
certain that he was very skilful in fitting the facts to his
theory-even the fact that during the month he spent in Rome at this
period the husband of the woman he loved appeared to regard him not in
the least as an enemy.
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