xity of
things she was still capable of these primitive sequences. She had not
received the happiest impression of the Countess on meeting her at the
villa, but was thankful for an opportunity to repair the accident.
Had not Mr. Osmond remarked that she was a respectable person? To have
proceeded from Gilbert Osmond this was a crude proposition, but Madame
Merle bestowed upon it a certain improving polish. She told Isabel
more about the poor Countess than Mr. Osmond had done, and related the
history of her marriage and its consequences. The Count was a member of
an ancient Tuscan family, but of such small estate that he had been glad
to accept Amy Osmond, in spite of the questionable beauty which had yet
not hampered her career, with the modest dowry her mother was able
to offer--a sum about equivalent to that which had already formed her
brother's share of their patrimony. Count Gemini since then, however,
had inherited money, and now they were well enough off, as Italians
went, though Amy was horribly extravagant. The Count was a low-lived
brute; he had given his wife every pretext. She had no children; she had
lost three within a year of their birth. Her mother, who had bristled
with pretensions to elegant learning and published descriptive poems and
corresponded on Italian subjects with the English weekly journals, her
mother had died three years after the Countess's marriage, the father,
lost in the grey American dawn of the situation, but reputed originally
rich and wild, having died much earlier. One could see this in Gilbert
Osmond, Madame Merle held--see that he had been brought up by a woman;
though, to do him justice, one would suppose it had been by a more
sensible woman than the American Corinne, as Mrs. Osmond had liked to be
called. She had brought her children to Italy after her husband's death,
and Mrs. Touchett remembered her during the year that followed her
arrival. She thought her a horrible snob; but this was an irregularity
of judgement on Mrs. Touchett's part, for she, like Mrs. Osmond,
approved of political marriages. The Countess was very good company and
not really the featherhead she seemed; all one had to do with her was
to observe the simple condition of not believing a word she said.
Madame Merle had always made the best of her for her brother's sake;
he appreciated any kindness shown to Amy, because (if it had to be
confessed for him) he rather felt she let down their common name.
Naturall