announced for the information of Mr. Osmond. “I should like him to converse with a few of our Boston radicals.”      

       “Don’t they approve of iron fences?” asked Mr. Bantling.     

       “Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were talking to you over something with a neat top-finish of broken glass.”      

       “Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?” Osmond went on, questioning Isabel.     

       “Well enough for all the use I have for him.”      

       “And how much of a use is that?”      

       “Well, I like to like him.”      

       “‘Liking to like’—why, it makes a passion!” said Osmond.     

       “No”—she considered—“keep that for liking to dislike.”      

       “Do you wish to provoke me then,” Osmond laughed, “to a passion for him?”      

       She said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question with a disproportionate gravity. “No, Mr. Osmond; I don’t think I should ever dare to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate,” she more easily added,       “is a very nice man.”      

       “Of great ability?” her friend enquired.     

       “Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks.”      

       “As good as he’s good-looking do you mean? He’s very good-looking. How detestably fortunate!—to be a great English magnate, to be clever and handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to enjoy your high favour! That’s a man I could envy.”      

       Isabel considered him with interest. “You seem to me to be always envying some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it’s poor Lord Warburton.”      

       “My envy’s not dangerous; it wouldn’t hurt a mouse. I don’t want to destroy the people—I only want to be them. You see it would destroy only myself.”      

 Prev. P 7/294 next