It cost him therefore a lapse
from consistency to say explicitly that he yearned for Lord
Warburton and that if this nobleman should escape his equivalent might
not be found; with which moreover it was another of his customary
implications that he was never inconsistent. He would have liked his
wife to glide over the point. But strangely enough, now that she was
face to face with him and although an hour before she had almost
invented a scheme for pleasing him, Isabel was not accommodating,
would not glide. And yet she knew exactly the effect on his mind of
her question: it would operate as an humiliation. Never mind; he was
terribly capable of humiliating her-all the more so that he was also
capable of waiting for great opportunities and of showing sometimes an
almost unaccountable indifference to small ones. Isabel perhaps took a
small opportunity because she would not have availed herself of a
great one.
Osmond at present acquitted himself very honourably. "I should
like it extremely; it would be a great marriage. And then Lord
Warburton has another advantage: he's an old friend of yours. It would
be pleasant for him to come into the family.
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