Chapter 45 - Page 2

hideous. To break
with Osmond once would be to break for ever; any open
acknowledgement of irreconcilable needs would be an admission
that their whole attempt had proved a failure. For them there
could be no condonement, no compromise, no easy forgetfulness, no
formal readjustment. They had attempted only one thing, but that
one thing was to have been exquisite. Once they missed it nothing
else would do; there was no conceivable substitute for that
success. For the moment, Isabel went to the Hotel de Paris as
often as she thought well; the measure of propriety was in the
canon of taste, and there couldn't have been a better proof that
morality was, so to speak, a matter of earnest appreciation.
Isabel's application of that measure had been particularly free
to-day, for in addition to the general truth that she couldn't
leave Ralph to die alone she had something important to ask of
him. This indeed was Gilbert's business as well as her own.

She came very soon to what she wished to speak of. "I want you to
answer me a question. It's about Lord Warburton."

"I think I guess your question," Ralph answered from his
arm-chair, out of which his thin legs protruded at greater length
than ever.

"Very possibly you guess it. Please then answer it."

"Oh, I don't say I can do that."

"You're intimate with him," she said; "you've a great deal of
observation of him."

"Very true. But think how he must dissimulate!"

"Why should he dissimulate? That's not his nature."

"Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are peculiar," said
Ralph with an air of private amusement.

"To a certain extent--yes. But is he really in love?"

"Very much, I think. I can make that out."

"Ah!" said Isabel with a certain dryness.

Ralph looked at her as if his mild hilarity had been touched with
mystification. "You say that as if you were disappointed."

Isabel got up, slowly smoothing her gloves and eyeing them
thoughtfully. "It's after all no business of mine."

"You're very philosophic," said her cousin. And then in a moment:
"May I enquire what you're talking about?"

Isabel stared. "I thought you knew. Lord Warburton tells me he
wants, of all things in the world, to marry Pansy. I've told you
that before, without eliciting a comment from you. You might risk
one this morning, I think. Is it your belief that he really cares
for her?"

"Ah, for Pansy, no!" cried Ralph very positively.

"But you said just now he did."

Ralph waited a moment. "That he cared for you, Mrs. Osmond."

Isabel shook her head gravely. "That's nonsense, you know."

"Of course it is. But the nonsense is Warburton's, not mine."

"That would