THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 163 might supply us with very creditable imitations of it, and the part of wisdom was to make the best of these. Certainly, on the whole, Isabel had never encountered a more agreeable and interesting woman than Madame Merle ; she had never met a woman who had less of that fault which is the principal obstacle to friendship the air of reproducing the more tiresome parts of one's own personality. The gates of the girl's confidence were opened wider than they had ever been ; she said things to Madame Merle that she had not yet said to any one. Sometimes she took alarm at her candour; it was as if she had given to a comparative stranger the key to her cabinet of jewels. These spiritual gems were the only ones of any magnitude that Isabel possessed ; but that was all the greater reason why they should be carefully guarded. Afterwards, however, the girl always said to herself that one should never regret a generous error, and that if Madame Merle had not the merits she attributed to her, so much the worse for Madame Merle. There was no doubt she had great merits she was a charming, sympathetic, intelligent, cultivated woman. More than this (for it had not been Isabel's
- ill-fortune to go through life without meeting several persons of
her own sex, of whom no less could fairly be said), she was rare, she was superior, she was pre-eminent. There are a great many amiable people in the world, and Madame Merle was far from being vulgarly good-natured and restlessly witty. She knew how to think an accomplishment rare in women ; and she had thought to very good purpose. Of course, too, she knew how to feel ; Isabel could not have spent a week with her without being sure of that. This was, indeed, Madame Merle's great talent, her most perfect gift. Life 'had told upon her ; she had felt it strongly, and it was part of the satisfaction that Isabel found in her society that when the girl talked of what she was pleased to call serious matters, her companion understood her so easily and quickly. Emotion, it is true, had become with her rather historic ; she made no secret of the fact that the fountain of sentiment, thanks to having been rather violently tapped at one period, did not flow quite so freely as of yore. Her pleasure was now to judge rather than to feel ; she freely admitted that of old she had been rather foolish, and now she pretended to be wise. " I judge more than I used to," sho said to Isabel ; " but it seems to me that I have earned the right. One can't judge till one is forty ; before that we are too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition too ignorant. I am sorry for you ; it will be a long time before you are forty. But every gain is a loss of M 2
