er was
negative, and consisted in not giving her trouble--a conviction which
certainly could have had no reference to trouble already existing. She
was therefore ingeniously passive and almost imaginatively docile; she
was careful even to moderate the eagerness with which she assented to
Isabel's propositions and which might have implied that she could have
thought otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social questions,
and though she delighted in approbation, to the point of turning pale
when it came to her, never held out her hand for it. She only looked
toward it wistfully--an attitude which, as she grew older, made her eyes
the prettiest in the world. When during the second winter at Palazzo
Roccanera she began to go to parties, to dances, she always, at a
reasonable hour, lest Mrs. Osmond should be tired, was the first to
propose departure. Isabel appreciated the sacrifice of the late dances,
for she knew her little companion had a passionate pleasure in this
exercise, taking her steps to the music like a conscientious fairy.
Society, moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she liked even the tiresome
parts--the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of dinners, the crush at
the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day, in this
vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed, appreciative
posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if she had been taken
to drive for the first time.

On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the gates of
the city and at the end of half an hour had left the carriage to await
them by the roadside while they walked away over the short grass of the
Campagna, which even in the winter months is sprinkled with delicate
flowers. This was almost a daily habit with Isabel, who was fond of a
walk and had a swift length of step, though not so swift a one as on her
first coming to Europe. It was not the form of exercise that Pansy loved
best, but she liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved with
a shorter undulation beside her father's wife, who afterwards, on their
return to Rome, paid a tribute to her preferences by making the circuit
of the Pincian or the Villa Borghese. She had gathered a handful of
flowers in a sunny hollow, far from the walls of Rome, and on reaching
Palazzo Roccanera she went straight to her room, to put them into
water. Isabel passed into the drawing-room, the one she herself usually
occupied, the second in order f