Chapter 38 - Page 2

was being insulted, and he waited a
moment, asking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to.
"Madame Merle gave me, as I understood it, a message from you--
to the effect that you declined to give me the opportunity I
desire, the opportunity to explain my wishes to you." And he
flattered himself he spoke rather sternly.

"I don't see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why did you
apply to Madame Merle?"

"I asked her for an opinion--for nothing more. I did so because
she had seemed to me to know you very well."

"She doesn't know me so well as she thinks," said Osmond.

"I'm sorry for that, because she has given me some little ground
for hope."

Osmond stared into the fire a moment. "I set a great price on my
daughter."

"You can't set a higher one than I do. Don't I prove it by wishing
to marry her?"

"I wish to marry her very well," Osmond went on with a dry
impertinence which, in another mood, poor Rosier would have
admired.

"Of course I pretend she'd marry well in marrying me. She
couldn't marry a man who loves her more--or whom, I may venture to
add, she loves more."

"I'm not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter
loves"--and Osmond looked up with a quick, cold smile.

"I'm not theorising. Your daughter has spoken."

"Not to me," Osmond continued, now bending forward a little and
dropping his eyes to his boot-toes.

"I have her promise, sir!" cried Rosier with the sharpness of
exasperation.

As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note
attracted some attention from the company. Osmond waited till
this little movement had subsided; then he said, all undisturbed:
"I think she has no recollection of having given it."

They had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after he
had uttered these last words the master of the house turned round
again to the room. Before Rosier had time to reply he perceived
that a gentleman--a stranger--had just come in, unannounced,
according to the Roman custom, and was about to present himself
to his host. The latter smiled blandly, but somewhat blankly; the
visitor had a handsome face and a large, fair beard, and was
evidently an Englishman.

"You apparently don't recognise me," he said with a smile that
expressed more than Osmond's.

"Ah yes, now I do. I expected so little to see you."

Rosier departed and went in direct pursuit of Pansy. He sought
her, as usual, in the neighbouring room, but he again encountered
Mrs. Osmond in his path. He gave his hostess no greeting--he was
too righteously indignant, but said to her crudely: "Your
husband's awfully cold-blooded."

She gave the same mystical