would not be to inflame her former lovers with a sense of her
wrongs. Miss Stackpole continued to take a deep interest in the
state of Mr. Goodwood's feelings, but she showed it at present
only by sending him choice extracts, humorous and other, from the
American journals, of which she received several by every post
and which she always perused with a pair of scissors in her hand.
The articles she cut out she placed in an envelope addressed to
Mr. Goodwood, which she left with her own hand at his hotel. He
never asked her a question about Isabel: hadn't he come five
thousand miles to see for himself? He was thus not in the least
authorised to think Mrs. Osmond unhappy; but the very absence of
authorisation operated as an irritant, ministered to the harsh-
ness with which, in spite of his theory that he had ceased to
care, he now recognised that, so far as she was concerned, the
future had nothing more for him. He had not even the satisfaction
of knowing the truth; apparently he could not even be trusted to
respect her if she WERE unhappy. He was hopeless, helpless,
useless. To this last character she had called his attention by
her ingenious plan for making him leave Rome. He had no objection
whatever to doing what he could for her cousin, but it made him
grind his teeth to think that of all the services she might have
asked of him this was the one she had been eager to select. There
had been no danger of her choosing one that would have kept him
in Rome.

To-night what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to leave
her to-morrow and that he had gained nothing by coming but the
knowledge that he was as little wanted as ever. About herself he
had gained no knowledge; she was imperturbable, inscrutable,
impenetrable. He felt the old bitterness, which he had tried so