"That's perfect.Go and give some to my young lady.""Very good; but after that I'll abandon her to her fate.The simple truth is I'm dying to have a little talk with Miss Osmond.""Ah," said Isabel, turning away, "I can't help you there!"Five minutes later, while he handed a tea-cup to the damsel in pink, whom he had conducted into the other room, he wondered whether, in making to Mrs.Osmond the profession I have just quoted, he had broken the spirit of his promise to Madame Merle.Such a question was capable of occupying this young man's mind for a considerable time.At last, however, he became-comparatively speaking-reckless; he cared little what promises he might break.The fate to which he had threatened to abandon the damsel in pink proved to be none so terrible; for Pansy Osmond, who had given him the tea for his companion-Pansy was as fond as ever of making tea-presently came and talked to her.Into this mild colloquy Edward Rosier entered little; he sat by moodily, watching his small sweetheart.If we look at her now through his eyes we shall at first not see much to remind us of the obedient little girl who, at Florence, three years before, was sent to walk short distances in the Cascine while her father and Miss Archer talked together of matters sacred to elder people.But after a moment we shall perceive that if at nineteen Pansy has become a young lady she doesn't really fill out the part; that if she has grown very pretty she lacks in a deplorable degree the quality known and esteemed in the appearance of females as style; and that if she is dressed with great freshness she wears her smart attire with an undisguised appearance of saving it-very much as if it were lent her for the occasion.Edward Rosier, it would seem, would have been just the man to note these defects; and in point of fact there was not a quality of this young lady, of any sort, that he had not noted.Only he called her qualities by names of his own-some of which indeed were happy enough."No, she's unique-she's absolutely unique," he used to say to himself; and you may be sure that not for an instant would he have admitted to you that she was wanting in style.Style? Why, she had the style of a little princess; if you couldn't see it you had no eye.It was not modern, it was not conscious, it would produce no impression in Broadway; the small, serious damsel, in her stiff little dress, only looked like an Infanta of Velasquez.This was enough for Edward Rosier, who thought her delightfully old-fashioned.Her anxious eyes, her charming lips, her slip of a figure, were as touching as a childish prayer.He had now an acute desire to know just to what point she liked him-a desire which made him fidget as he sat in his chair.
It made him feel hot, so that he had to pat his forehead with his handkerchief; he had never been so uncomfortable.She was such a perfect jeune fille, and one couldn't make of a jeune fille the enquiry requisite for throwing light on such a point.A jeune fille was what Rosier had always dreamed of-a jeune fille who should yet not be French, for he had felt that this nationality would complicate the question.He was sure Pansy had never looked at a newspaper and that, in the way of novels, if she had read Sir Walter Scott it was the very most.An American jeune fille-what could be better than that?
She would be frank and gay, and yet would not have walked alone, nor have received letters from men, nor have been taken to the theatre to see the comedy of manners.Rosier could not deny that, as the matter stood, it would be a breach of hospitality to appeal directly to this unsophisticated creature; but he was now in imminent danger of asking himself if hospitality were the most sacred thing in the world.
