She made up her mind to speak to Pansy, and she took an occasion on the same day, going to the girl's room before dinner.Pansy was already dressed; she was always in advance of the time: it seemed to illustrate her pretty patience and the graceful stillness with which she could sit and wait.At present she was seated, in her fresh array, before the bed-room fire; she had blown out her candles on the completion of her toilet, in accordance with the economical habits in which she had been brought up and which she was now more careful than ever to observe; so that the room was lighted only by a couple of logs.The rooms in Palazzo Roccanera were as spacious as they were numerous, and Pansy's virginal bower was an immense chamber with a dark, heavily-timbered ceiling.Its diminutive mistress, in the midst of it, appeared but a speck of humanity, and as she got up, with quick deference, to welcome Isabel, the latter was more than ever struck with her shy sincerity.Isabel had a difficult task-the only thing was to perform it as simply as possible.She felt bitter and angry, but she warned herself against betraying this heat.She was afraid even of looking too grave, or at least too stern; she was afraid of causing alarm.But Pansy seemed to have guessed she had come more or less as a confessor; for after she had moved the chair in which she had been sitting a little nearer to the fire and Isabel had taken her place in it, she kneeled down on a cushion in front of her, looking up and resting her clasped hands on her stepmother's knees.What Isabel wished to do was to hear from her own lips that her mind was not occupied with Lord Warburton; but if she desired the assurance she felt herself by no means at liberty to provoke it.The girl's father would have qualified this as rank treachery; and indeed Isabel knew that if Pansy should display the smallest germ of a disposition to encourage Lord Warburton her own duty was to hold her tongue.It was difficult to interrogate without appearing to suggest; Pansy's supreme simplicity, an innocence even more complete than Isabel had yet judged it, gave to the most tentative enquiry something of the effect of an admonition.As she knelt there in the vague firelight, with her pretty dress dimly shining, her hands folded half in appeal and half in submission, her soft eyes, raised and fixed, full of the seriousness of the situation, she looked to Isabel like a childish martyr decked out for sacrifice and scarcely presuming even to hope to avert it.When Isabel said to her that she had never yet spoken to her of what might have been going on in relation to her getting married, but that her silence had not been indifference or ignorance, had only been the desire to leave her at liberty, Pansy bent forward, raised her face nearer and nearer, and with a little murmur which evidently expressed a deep longing, answered that she had greatly wished her to speak and that she begged her to advise her now.
"It's difficult for me to advise you," Isabel returned."I don't know how I can undertake that.That's for your father; you must get his advice and, above all, you must act on it."At this Pansy dropped her eyes; for a moment she said nothing."Ithink I should like your advice better than papa's," she presently remarked.
"That's not as it should be," said Isabel coldly."I love you very much, but your father loves you better.""It isn't because you love me-it's because you're a lady," Pansy answered with the air of saying something very reasonable."A lady can advise a young girl better than a man.""I advise you then to pay the greatest respect to your father's wishes.""Ah yes," said the child eagerly, "I must do that.""But if I speak to you now about your getting married it's not for your own sake, it's for mine," Isabel went on."If I try to learn from you what you expect, what you desire, it's only that I may act accordingly."Pansy stared, and then very quickly, "Will you do everything Iwant?" she asked.
"Before I say yes I must know what such things are."Pansy presently told her that the only thing she wanted in life was to marry Mr.Rosier.He had asked her and she had told him she would do so if her papa would allow it.Now her papa wouldn't allow it.
"Very well then, it's impossible," Isabel pronounced.
"Yes, it's impossible," said Pansy without a sigh and with the same extreme attention in her clear little face.
"You must think of something else then," Isabel went on; but Pansy, sighing at this, told her that she had attempted that feat without the least success.
"You think of those who think of you," she said with a faint smile."I know Mr.Rosier thinks of me.""He ought not to," said Isabel loftily."Your father has expressly requested he shouldn't.""He can't help it, because he knows I think of him.""You shouldn't think of him.There's some excuse for him, perhaps;but there's none for you."
"I wish you would try to find one," the girl exclaimed as if she were praying to the Madonna.
"I should be very sorry to attempt it," said the Madonna with unusual frigidity."If you knew some one else was thinking of you, would you think of him?""No one can think of me as Mr.Rosier does; no one has the right.""Ah, but I don't admit Mr.Rosier's right!" Isabel hypocritically cried.
