Such guilt would not have been great, to Isabel's mind; she couldn't
make a crime of Madame Merle's having been the producing cause of
the most important friendship she had ever formed. This had occurred
to her just before her marriage, after her little discussion with
her aunt and at a time when she was still capable of that large inward
reference, the tone almost of the philosophic historian, to her
scant young annals. If Madame Merle had desired her change of state
she could only say it had been a very happy thought. With her,
moreover, she had been perfectly straightforward; she had never
concealed her high opinion of Gilbert Osmond. After their union Isabel
discovered that her husband took a less convenient view of the matter;
he seldom consented to finger, in talk, this roundest and smoothest
bead of their social rosary.
"Don't you like Madame Merle?" Isabel had once said to him. "She
thinks a great deal of you."
"I'll tell you once for all," Osmond had answered. "I liked her once
better than I do to-day. I'm tired of her, and I'm rather ashamed of
it. She's so almost unnaturally good! I'm glad she's not in Italy;
it makes for relaxation-for a sort of moral detente.
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