, as you probably know, he's on no sort of terms with
Osmond. He's very fond of going to see pretty women, but I'm not afraid
of you. In the first place I don't care what he does. In the second, you
won't care a straw for him; he won't be a bit, at any time, your affair,
and, stupid as he is, he'll see you're not his. Some day, if you can
stand it, I'll tell you all about him. Do you think my niece ought to go
out of the room? Pansy, go and practise a little in my boudoir."

"Let her stay, please," said Isabel. "I would rather hear nothing that
Pansy may not!"

CHAPTER XXXVI

One afternoon of the autumn of 1876, toward dusk, a young man of
pleasing appearance rang at the door of a small apartment on the third
floor of an old Roman house. On its being opened he enquired for Madame
Merle; whereupon the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face
and a lady's maid's manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room
and requested the favour of his name. "Mr. Edward Rosier," said the
young man, who sat down to wait till his hostess should appear.

The reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr. Rosier was an
ornament of the American circle in Paris, but it may also be remembered
that he sometimes vanished from its horizon. He had spent a portion of
several winters at Pau, and as he was a gentleman of constituted habits
he might have continued for years to pay his annual visit to this
charming resort. In the summer of 1876, however, an incident befell him
which changed the current not only of his thoughts, but of his customary
sequences. He passed a month in the Upper Engadine and encountered at
Saint Moritz a charming young girl. To this little person he began to
pay, on the spot, particular attention: she struck him as exactly the
household angel he had long been looking for. He was never precipitate,
he was nothing if not discreet, so he forbore for the present to declare
his passion; but it seemed to him when they parted--the young lady to go
down into Italy and her admirer to proceed to Geneva, where he was under
bonds to join other friends--that he should be romantically wretched if
he were not to see her again. The simplest way to do so was to go in
the autumn to Rome, where Miss Osmond was domiciled with her family. Mr.
Rosier started on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital and reached it
on the first of November. It was a pleasant thing to do, but for the
young man there was a strain of the heroic i