t the child's affectionate nature craved.
She watched her indications as if for herself also much depended on
them--Pansy already so represented part of the service she could render,
part of the responsibility she could face. Her father took so the
childish view of her that he had not yet explained to her the new
relation in which he stood to the elegant Miss Archer. "She doesn't
know," he said to Isabel; "she doesn't guess; she thinks it perfectly
natural that you and I should come and walk here together simply as good
friends. There seems to me something enchantingly innocent in that; it's
the way I like her to be. No, I'm not a failure, as I used to think;
I've succeeded in two things. I'm to marry the woman I adore, and I've
brought up my child, as I wished, in the old way."

He was very fond, in all things, of the "old way"; that had struck
Isabel as one of his fine, quiet, sincere notes. "It occurs to me that
you'll not know whether you've succeeded until you've told her," she
said. "You must see how she takes your news, She may be horrified--she
may be jealous."

"I'm not afraid of that; she's too fond of you on her own account. I
should like to leave her in the dark a little longer--to see if it will
come into her head that if we're not engaged we ought to be."

Isabel was impressed by Osmond's artistic, the plastic view, as it
somehow appeared, of Pansy's innocence--her own appreciation of it being
more anxiously moral. She was perhaps not the less pleased when he told
her a few days later that he had communicated the fact to his daughter,
who had made such a pretty little speech--"Oh, then I shall have a
beautiful sister!" She was neither surprised nor alarmed; she had not
cried, as he expected.

"Perhaps she had guessed it," said Isabel.

"Don't say that; I should be disgusted if I believed that. I thought it
would be just a little shock; but the way she took it proves that her
good manners are paramount. That's also what I wished. You shall see for
yourself; to-morrow she shall make you her congratulations in person."

The meeting, on the morrow, took place at the Countess Gemini's, whither
Pansy had been conducted by her father, who knew that Isabel was to come
in the afternoon to return a visit made her by the Countess on learning
that they were to become sisters-in-law. Calling at Casa Touchett the
visitor had not found Isabel at home; but after our young woman had been
ushered into the Countess's d