Don't talk of her
too much; it seems to bring her back. She'll come back in plenty of
time."
Madame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too late-too
late, I mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have lost. But
meantime, if, as I have said, she was sensibly different, Isabel's
feelings were also not quite the same. Her consciousness of the
situation was as acute as of old, but it was much less satisfying. A
dissatisfied mind, whatever else it may miss, is rarely in want of
reasons; they bloom as thick as buttercups in June. The fact of Madame
Merle's having had a hand in Gilbert Osmond's marriage ceased to be
one of her titles to consideration; it might have been written,
after all, that there was not so much to thank her for. As time went
on there was less and less, and Isabel once said to herself that
perhaps without her these things would not have been. That
reflection indeed was instantly stifled; she knew an immediate
horror at having made it. "Whatever happens to me let me not be
unjust," she said; "Let me bear my burdens myself and not shift them
upon others!" This disposition was tested, eventually, by that
ingenious apology for her present conduct which Madame Merle saw fit
to make and of which I have given a sketch; for there was something
irritating-there was almost an air of mockery-in her neat
discriminations and clear convictions.
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