Chapter 44 - Page 2

satisfaction. Osmond didn't
want her--that she was perfectly aware of; but she would have
gone all the same, for after all she didn't care two straws about
Osmond. It was her husband who wouldn't let her, and the money
question was always a trouble. Isabel had been very nice; the
Countess, who had liked her sister-in-law from the first, had not
been blinded by envy to Isabel's personal merits. She had always
observed that she got on better with clever women than with silly
ones like herself; the silly ones could never understand her
wisdom, whereas the clever ones--the really clever ones--always
understood her silliness. It appeared to her that, different as
they were in appearance and general style, Isabel and she had
somewhere a patch of common ground that they would set their feet
upon at last. It was not very large, but it was firm, and they
should both know it when once they had really touched it. And
then she lived, with Mrs. Osmond, under the influence of a
pleasant surprise; she was constantly expecting that Isabel would
"look down" on her, and she as constantly saw this operation
postponed. She asked herself when it would begin, like
fire-works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she cared
much, but she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her
sister-in-law regarded her with none but level glances and
expressed for the poor Countess as little contempt as admiration.
In reality Isabel would as soon have thought of despising her as
of passing a moral judgement on a grasshopper. She was not
indifferent to her husband's sister, however; she was rather a
little afraid of her. She wondered at her; she thought her very
extraordinary. The Countess seemed to her to have no soul; she
was like a bright rare shell, with a polished surface and a
remarkably pink lip, in which something would rattle when you
shook it. This rattle was apparently the Countess's spiritual
principle, a little loose nut that tumbled about inside of her.
She was too odd for disdain, too anomalous for comparisons.
Isabel would have invited her again (there was no question of
inviting the Count); but Osmond, after his marriage, had not
scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the worst species
--a fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He said
at another time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment
that she had given it all away--in small pieces, like a frosted
wedding-cake. The fact of not having been asked was of course
another obstacle to the Countess's going again to Rome; but at
the period with which this history has now to deal she was in
receipt of an invitation to spend several weeks at Palazzo
Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond himself, who wrote
to his sister that she