Chapter 47

CHAPTER XLVII

It was from Henrietta Stackpole that she learned how Caspar
Goodwood had come to Rome; an event that took place three days
after Lord Warburton's departure. This latter fact had been
preceded by an incident of some importance to Isabel--the
temporary absence, once again, of Madame Merle, who had gone to
Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessor of a villa at
Posilippo. Madame Merle had ceased to minister to Isabel's
happiness, who found herself wondering whether the most discreet
of women might not also by chance be the most dangerous.
Sometimes, at night, she had strange visions; she seemed to see
her husband and her friend--his friend--in dim, indistinguishable
combination. It seemed to her that she had not done with her;
this lady had something in reserve. Isabel's imagination applied
itself actively to this elusive point, but every now and then it
was checked by a nameless dread, so that when the charming woman
was away from Rome she had almost a consciousness of respite. She
had already learned from Miss Stackpole that Caspar Goodwood was
in Europe, Henrietta having written to make it known to her
immediately after meeting him in Paris. He himself never wrote to
Isabel, and though he was in Europe she thought it very possible
he might not desire to see her. Their last interview, before her
marriage, had had quite the character of a complete rupture; if
she remembered rightly he had said he wished to take his last
look at her. Since then he had been the most discordant survival
of her earlier time--the only one in fact with which a permanent
pain was associated. He had left her that morning with a sense of
the most superfluous of shocks: it was like a collision between
vessels in broad daylight. There had been no mist, no hidden
current to excuse it, and she herself had only wished to steer
wide. He had bumped against her prow, however, while her hand was
on the tiller, and--to complete the metaphor--had given the
lighter vessel a strain which still occasionally betrayed itself
in a faint creaking. It had been horrid to see him, because he
represented the only serious harm that (to her belief) she had
ever done in the world: he was the only person with an
unsatisfied claim on her. She had made him unhappy, she couldn't
help it; and his unhappiness was a grim reality. She had cried
with rage, after he had left her, at--she hardly knew what: she
tried to think it had been at his want of consideration. He had
come to her with his unhappiness when her own bliss was so
perfect; he had done his best to darken the brightness of those
pure rays. He had not been violent, and yet there had been a
violence in the impression. There had been a violence at any rate
in