He felt cold about the heart; he had never liked anything less.
What could he do, what could he say? If the girl were
irreclaimable could he pretend to like it? To attempt to reclaim
her was permissible only if the attempt should succeed. To try to
persuade her of anything sordid or sinister in the man to whose
deep art she had succumbed would be decently discreet only in the
event of her being persuaded. Otherwise he should simply have
damned himself. It cost him an equal effort to speak his thought
and to dissemble; he could neither assent with sincerity nor
protest with hope. Meanwhile he knew--or rather he supposed--that
the affianced pair were daily renewing their mutual vows. Osmond
at this moment showed himself little at Palazzo Crescentini; but
Isabel met him every day elsewhere, as she was free to do after
their engagement had been made public. She had taken a carriage
by the month, so as not to be indebted to her aunt for the means
of pursuing a course of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved, and she
drove in the morning to the Cascine. This suburban wilderness,
during the early hours, was void of all intruders, and our young
lady, joined by her lover in its quietest part, strolled with him
a while through the grey Italian shade and listened to the
nightingales.



CHAPTER XXIV

One morning, on her return from her drive, some half-hour before
luncheon, she quitted her vehicle in the court of the palace and,
instead of ascending the great staircase, crossed the court,
passed beneath another archway and entered the garden. A sweeter