This was indeed Madame Merle's great talent, her most perfect gift.

Life had told upon her; she had felt it strongly, and it was part of the satisfaction to be taken in her society that when the girl talked of what she was pleased to call serious matters this lady understood her so easily and quickly.

Emotion, it is true, had become with her rather historic; she made no secret of the fact that the fount of passion, thanks to having been rather violently tapped at one period, didn't flow quite so freely as of yore.

She proposed moreover, as well as expected, to cease feeling; she freely admitted that of old she had been a little mad, and now she pretended to be perfectly sane.
"I judge more than I used to," she said to Isabel, "but it seems to me one has earned the right.

One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.
I'm sorry for you; it will be a long time before you're forty.