she had what always gave her a very private thrill, the consciousness of a new relation.Through the open doors of the great room she saw Madame Merle and the Countess stroll across the fine grass of the garden; then she turned, and her eyes wandered over the things scattered about her.The understanding had been that Mr.Osmond should show her his treasures; his pictures and cabinets all looked like treasures.Isabel after a moment went toward one of the pictures to see it better; but just as she had done so he said to her abruptly: "Miss Archer, what do you think of my sister?"She faced him with some surprise."Ah, don't ask me that- I've seen your sister too little.""Yes, you've seen her very little; but you must have observed that there is not a great deal of her to see.What do you think of our family tone?" he went on with his cool smile."I should like to know how it strikes a fresh, unprejudiced mind.I know what you're going to say- you've had almost no observation of it.Of course this is only a glimpse.But just take notice, in future, if you have a chance.Isometimes think we've got into a rather bad way, living off here among things and people not our own, without responsibilities or attachments, with nothing to hold us together or keep us up;marrying foreigners, forming artificial tastes, playing tricks with our natural mission.Let me add, though, that I say that much more for myself than for my sister.She's a very honest lady- more so than she seems.She's rather unhappy, and as she's not of a serious turn she doesn't tend to show it tragically: she shows it comically instead.She has got a horrid husband, though I'm not sure she makes the best of him.Of course, however, a horrid husband's an awkward thing.Madame Merle gives her excellent advice, but it's a good deal like giving a child a dictionary to learn a language with.He can look out the words, but he can't put them together.My sister needs a grammar, but unfortunately she's not grammatical.Pardon my troubling you with these details; my sister was very right in saying you've been taken into the family.Let me take down that picture;you want more light."
He took down the picture, carried it toward the window, related some curious facts about it.She looked at the other works of art, and he gave her such further information as might appear most acceptable to a young lady making a call on a summer afternoon.His pictures, his medallions and tapestries were interesting; but after a while Isabel felt the owner much more so, and independently of them, thickly as they seemed to overhang him.He resembled no one she had ever seen;most of the people she knew might be divided into groups of half a dozen specimens.There were one or two exceptions to this; she could think for instance of no group that would contain her aunt Lydia.
There were other people who were, relatively speaking, original-original, as one might say, by courtesy- such as Mr.Goodwood, as her cousin Ralph, as Henrietta Stackpole, as Lord Warburton, as Madame Merle.But in essentials, when one came to look at them, these individuals belonged to types already present to her mind.Her mind contained no class offering a natural place to Mr.Osmond- he was a specimen apart.It was not that she recognized all these truths at the hour, but they were falling into order before her.For the moment she only said to herself that this "new relation" would perhaps prove her very most distinguished.Madame Merle had had that note of rarity, but what quite other power it immediately gained when sounded by a man! It was not so much what he said and did, but rather what he withheld, that marked him for her as by one of those signs of the highly curious that he was showing her on the underside of old plates and in the corner of sixteenth-century drawings: he indulged in no striking deflections from common usage, he was an original without being an eccentric.She had never met a person of so fine a grain.The peculiarity was physical, to begin with, and it extended to impalpabilities.His dense, delicate hair, his overdrawn, retouched features, his clear complexion, ripe without being coarse, the very evenness of the growth of his beard, and that light, smooth slenderness of structure which made the movement of a single one of his fingers produce the effect of an expressive gesture-these personal points struck our sensitive young woman as signs of quality, of intensity, somehow as promises of interest.He was certainly fastidious and critical; he was probably irritable.His sensibility had governed him- possibly governed him too much; it had made him impatient of vulgar troubles and had led him to live by himself, in a sorted, sifted, arranged world, thinking about art and beauty and history.He had consulted his taste in everything- his taste alone perhaps, as a sick man consciously incurable consults at last only his lawyer: that was what made him so different from every one else.Ralph had something of this same quality, this appearance of thinking that life was a matter of connoisseurship; but in Ralph it was an anomaly, a kind of humorous excrescence, whereas in Mr.
Osmond it was the keynote, and everything was in harmony with it.
She was certainly far from understanding him completely; his meaning was not at all times obvious.It was hard to see what he meant for instance by speaking of his provincial side- which was exactly the side she would have taken him most to lack.Was it a harmless paradox, intended to puzzle her? or was it the last refinement of high culture?
