presented to her nose the white flower of cultivated sweetness.
How well the child had been taught, said our admiring young
woman; how prettily she had been directed and fashioned; and yet
how simple, how natural, how innocent she had been kept! Isabel
was fond, ever, of the question of character and quality, of
sounding, as who should say, the deep personal mystery, and it
had pleased her, up to this time, to be in doubt as to whether
this tender slip were not really all-knowing. Was the extremity
of her candour but the perfection of self-consciousness? Was it
put on to please her father's visitor, or was it the direct
expression of an unspotted nature? The hour that Isabel spent in
Mr. Osmond's beautiful empty, dusky rooms--the windows had been
half-darkened, to keep out the heat, and here and there, through
an easy crevice, the splendid summer day peeped in, lighting a
gleam of faded colour or tarnished gilt in the rich gloom--her
interview with the daughter of the house, I say, effectually
settled this question. Pansy was really a blank page, a pure
white surface, successfully kept so; she had neither art, nor
guile, nor temper, nor talent--only two or three small exquisite
instincts: for knowing a friend, for avoiding a mistake,
for taking care of an old toy or a new frock. Yet to be so tender
was to be touching withal, and she could be felt as an easy
victim of fate. She would have no will, no power to resist, no
sense of her own importance; she would easily be mystified,
easily crushed: her force would be all in knowing when and where
to cling. She moved about the place with her visitor, who had
asked leave to walk through the other rooms again, where Pansy
gave her judgement on several works of art. She spoke of her
prospects, her occupations, her father's intentions; she was not
egotistical, but felt the propriety of supplying the information