Chapter 39 - Page 2

I just spoke was in part the result of the absence of two
persons who might have been looked for on the occasion and who
would have lent it a certain richness. Madame Merle had been
invited, but Madame Merle, who was unable to leave Rome, had
written a gracious letter of excuses. Henrietta Stackpole had not
been invited, as her departure from America, announced to Isabel
by Mr. Goodwood, was in fact frustrated by the duties of her
profession; but she had sent a letter, less gracious than Madame
Merle's, intimating that, had she been able to cross the
Atlantic, she would have been present not only as a witness but
as a critic. Her return to Europe had taken place somewhat later,
and she had effected a meeting with Isabel in the autumn, in
Paris, when she had indulged--perhaps a trifle too freely--her
critical genius. Poor Osmond, who was chiefly the subject of it,
had protested so sharply that Henrietta was obliged to declare to
Isabel that she had taken a step which put a barrier between
them. "It isn't in the least that you've married--it is that you
have married HIM," she had deemed it her duty to remark;
agreeing, it will be seen, much more with Ralph Touchett than she
suspected, though she had few of his hesitations and
compunctions. Henrietta's second visit to Europe, however, was
not apparently to have been made in vain; for just at the moment
when Osmond had declared to Isabel that he really must object to
that newspaper-woman, and Isabel had answered that it seemed to
her he took Henrietta too hard, the good Mr. Bantling had
appeared upon the scene and proposed that they should take a run
down to Spain. Henrietta's letters from Spain had proved the most
acceptable she had yet published, and there had been one in
especial, dated from the Alhambra and entitled 'Moors and
Moonlight,' which generally passed for her masterpiece. Isabel
had been secretly disappointed at her husband's not seeing his
way simply to take the poor girl for funny. She even wondered if
his sense of fun, or of the funny--which would be his sense of
humour, wouldn't it?--were by chance defective. Of course she
herself looked at the matter as a person whose present happiness
had nothing to grudge to Henrietta's violated conscience. Osmond
had thought their alliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn't
imagine what they had in common. For him, Mr. Bantling's fellow
tourist was simply the most vulgar of women, and he had also
pronounced her the most abandoned. Against this latter clause
of the verdict Isabel had appealed with an ardour that had made
him wonder afresh at the oddity of some of his wife's tastes.
Isabel could explain it only by saying that she liked to know
people who were as different as possible from