Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI

Isabel Archer was a young person of many theories; her
imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to
possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot
was cast; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts and to
care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar. It is
true that among her contemporaries she passed for a young woman
of extraordinary profundity; for these excellent people never
withheld their admiration from a reach of intellect of which they
themselves were not conscious, and spoke of Isabel as a prodigy
of learning, a creature reported to have read the classic authors
--in translations. Her paternal aunt, Mrs. Varian, once spread
the rumour that Isabel was writing a book--Mrs. Varian having a
reverence for books, and averred that the girl would distinguish
herself in print. Mrs. Varian thought highly of literature, for
which she entertained that esteem that is connected with a sense
of privation. Her own large house, remarkable for its assortment
of mosaic tables and decorated ceilings, was unfurnished with a
library, and in the way of printed volumes contained nothing but
half a dozen novels in paper on a shelf in the apartment of one
of the Miss Varians. Practically, Mrs. Varian's acquaintance with
literature was confined to The New York Interviewer; as she very
justly said, after you had read the Interviewer you had lost all
faith in culture. Her tendency, with this, was rather to keep the
Interviewer out of the way of her daughters; she was determined
to bring them up properly, and they read nothing at all. Her
impression with regard to Isabel's labours was quite illusory;
the girl had never attempted to write a book and had no desire
for the laurels of authorship. She had no talent for expression
and too little of the consciousness of genius; she only had a
general idea that people were right when they treated her as if
she were rather superior. Whether or no she were superior, people
were right in admiring her if they thought her so; for it seemed
to her often that her mind moved more quickly than theirs, and
this encouraged an impatience that might easily be confounded
with superiority. It may be affirmed without delay that Isabel
was probably very liable to the sin of self-esteem; she often
surveyed with complacency the field of her own nature; she was in
the habit of taking for granted, on scanty evidence, that she was
right; she treated herself to occasions of homage. Meanwhile her
errors and delusions were frequently such as a biographer
interested in preserving the dignity of his subject must shrink
from specifying. Her thoughts were a tangle of vague outlines
which had never been corrected by the judgement