ht, for all that, in taking her precautions.

One day about a month after Ralph Touchett's arrival in Rome Isabel
came back from a walk with Pansy. It was not only a part of her general
determination to be just that she was at present very thankful for
Pansy--it was also a part of her tenderness for things that were pure
and weak. Pansy was dear to her, and there was nothing else in her
life that had the rightness of the young creature's attachment or
the sweetness of her own clearness about it. It was like a soft
presence--like a small hand in her own; on Pansy's part it was more than
an affection--it was a kind of ardent coercive faith. On her own side
her sense of the girl's dependence was more than a pleasure; it operated
as a definite reason when motives threatened to fail her. She had said
to herself that we must take our duty where we find it, and that we
must look for it as much as possible. Pansy's sympathy was a direct
admonition; it seemed to say that here was an opportunity, not eminent
perhaps, but unmistakeable. Yet an opportunity for what Isabel could
hardly have said; in general, to be more for the child than the child
was able to be for herself. Isabel could have smiled, in these days, to
remember that her little companion had once been ambiguous, for she
now perceived that Pansy's ambiguities were simply her own grossness of
vision. She had been unable to believe any one could care so much--so
extraordinarily much--to please. But since then she had seen this
delicate faculty in operation, and now she knew what to think of it. It
was the whole creature--it was a sort of genius. Pansy had no pride to
interfere with it, and though she was constantly extending her conquests
she took no credit for them. The two were constantly together; Mrs.
Osmond was rarely seen without her stepdaughter. Isabel liked her
company; it had the effect of one's carrying a nosegay composed all
of the same flower. And then not to neglect Pansy, not under any
provocation to neglect her--this she had made an article of religion.
The young girl had every appearance of being happier in Isabel's society
than in that of any one save her father,--whom she admired with an
intensity justified by the fact that, as paternity was an exquisite
pleasure to Gilbert Osmond, he had always been luxuriously mild. Isabel
knew how Pansy liked to be with her and how she studied the means of
pleasing her. She had decided that the best way of pleasing h