Chapter 52

CHAPTER LII

There was a train for Turin and Paris that evening; and after the
Countess had left her Isabel had a rapid and decisive conference
with her maid, who was discreet, devoted and active. After this
she thought (except of her journey) only of one thing. She must
go and see Pansy; from her she couldn't turn away. She had not
seen her yet, as Osmond had given her to understand that it was
too soon to begin. She drove at five o'clock to a high floor in a
narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza Navona, and was
admitted by the portress of the convent, a genial and obsequious
person. Isabel had been at this institution before; she had come
with Pansy to see the sisters. She knew they were good women, and
she saw that the large rooms were clean and cheerful and that the
well-used garden had sun for winter and shade for spring. But she
disliked the place, which affronted and almost frightened her;
not for the world would she have spent a night there. It produced
to-day more than before the impression of a well-appointed
prison; for it was not possible to pretend Pansy was free to
leave it. This innocent creature had been presented to her in a
new and violent light, but the secondary effect of the revelation
was to make her reach out a hand.

The portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent while
she went to make it known that there was a visitor for the dear
young lady. The parlour was a vast, cold apartment, with
new-looking furniture; a large clean stove of white porcelain,
unlighted, a collection of wax flowers under glass, and a series
of engravings from religious pictures on the walls. On the other
occasion Isabel had thought it less like Rome than like
Philadelphia, but to-day she made no reflexions; the apartment
only seemed to her very empty and very soundless. The portress
returned at the end of some five minutes, ushering in another
person. Isabel got up, expecting to see one of the ladies of the
sisterhood, but to her extreme surprise found herself confronted
with Madame Merle. The effect was strange, for Madame Merle was
already so present to her vision that her appearance in the flesh
was like suddenly, and rather awfully, seeing a painted picture
move. Isabel had been thinking all day of her falsity, her
audacity, her ability, her probable suffering; and these dark
things seemed to flash with a sudden light as she entered the
room. Her being there at all had the character of ugly evidence,
of handwritings, of profaned relics, of grim things produced in
court. It made Isabel feel faint; if it had been necessary to
speak on the spot she would have been quite unable. But no such
necessity was distinct to her; it seemed to her indeed that she
had