"You would be sorrier still if you knew."
"What is there to know? You look very badly," the Countess added. "You must have been with Osmond."
Half an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to an intimation that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy of her sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her present embarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at this lady's fluttering attention. "I've been with Osmond," she said, while the Countess's bright eyes glittered at her.
"I'm sure then he has been odious!" the Countess cried. "Did he say he was glad poor Mr. Touchett's dying?"
"He said it's impossible I should go to England."
The Countess's mind, when her interests were concerned, was agile; she already foresaw the extinction of any further brig
