thousand pounds; the delicacy had been all in Mr.
Touchett's leaving them to her. But to marry Gilbert Osmond and bring
him such a portion--in that there would be delicacy for her as well.
There would be less for him--that was true; but that was his affair, and
if he loved her he wouldn't object to her being rich. Had he not had the
courage to say he was glad she was rich?

Isabel's cheek burned when she asked herself if she had really married
on a factitious theory, in order to do something finely appreciable with
her money. But she was able to answer quickly enough that this was
only half the story. It was because a certain ardour took possession of
her--a sense of the earnestness of his affection and a delight in
his personal qualities. He was better than any one else. This supreme
conviction had filled her life for months, and enough of it still
remained to prove to her that she could not have done otherwise. The
finest--in the sense of being the subtlest--manly organism she had ever
known had become her property, and the recognition of her having but
to put out her hands and take it had been originally a sort of act of
devotion. She had not been mistaken about the beauty of his mind; she
knew that organ perfectly now. She had lived with it, she had lived IN
it almost--it appeared to have become her habitation. If she had been
captured it had taken a firm hand to seize her; that reflection perhaps
had some worth. A mind more ingenious, more pliant, more cultivated,
more trained to admirable exercises, she had not encountered; and it was
this exquisite instrument she had now to reckon with. She lost herself
in infinite dismay when she thought of the magnitude of HIS deception.
It was a wonder, perhaps, in view of this, that he didn't hate her more.
She remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it--it had been
like the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of
their life. He said to her one day that she had too many ideas and that
she must get rid of them. He had told her that already, before their
marriage; but then she had not noticed it: it had come back to her only
afterwards. This time she might well have noticed it, because he had
really meant it. The words had been nothing superficially; but when in
the light of deepening experience she had looked into them they had then
appeared portentous. He had really meant it--he would have liked her to
have nothing of her own but her pretty app