It may pull you about horribly, but I defy it to break you up." Isabel received this assurance as a young soldier, still panting from a slight skirmish in which he has come off with honour, might receive a pat on the shoulder from his colonel.

Like such a recognition of merit it seemed to come with authority.

How could the lightest word do less on the part of a person who was prepared to say, of almost everything Isabel told her, "Oh, I've been in that, my dear; it passes, like everything else." On many of her interlocutors Madame Merle might have produced an irritating effect; it was disconcertingly difficult to surprise her.

But Isabel, though by no means incapable of desiring to be effective, had not at present this impulse.

She was too sincere, too interested in her judicious companion.