I don't know whether I succeed in expressing myself, but I know that nothing else expresses me.

Nothing that belongs to me is any measure of me; everything's on the contrary a limit, a barrier, and a perfectly arbitrary one.

Certainly the clothes which, as you say, I choose to wear, don't express me; and heaven forbid they should!" "You dress very well," Madame Merle lightly interposed.
"Possibly; but I don't care to be judged by that.

My clothes may express the dressmaker, but they don't express me.

To begin with it's not my own choice that I wear them; they're imposed upon me by society." "Should you prefer to go without them ?" Madame Merle enquired in a tone which virtually terminated the discussion.
I am bound to confess, though it may cast some discredit on the sketch I have given of the youthful loyalty practised by our heroine toward this accomplished woman, that Isabel had said nothing whatever to her about Lord Warburton and had been equally reticent on the subject of Caspar Goodwood.