But this
made it none the more auspicious, made the situation none the less
impossible. The sooner he should get back into right relations with
things the better. He immediately began to talk to Pansy-on whom it
was certainly mystifying to see that he dropped a smile of chastened
devotion. Pansy replied, as usual, with a little air of
conscientious aspiration; he had to bend toward her a good deal in
conversation, and her eyes, as usual, wandered up and down his
robust person as if he had offered it to her for exhibition. She
always seemed a little frightened; yet her fright was not of the
painful character that suggests dislike; on the contrary, she looked
as if she knew that he knew she liked him. Isabel left them together a
little and wandered toward a friend whom she saw near and with whom
she talked till the music of the following dance began, for which
she knew Pansy to be also engaged. The girl joined her presently, with
a little fluttered flush, and Isabel, who scrupulously took Osmond's
view of his daughter's complete dependence, consigned her, as a
precious and momentary loan, to her appointed partner. About all
this matter she had her own imaginations, her own reserves; there were
moments when Pansy's extreme adhesiveness made each of them, to her
sense, look foolish.
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