Just now, it is true, there was not much to do--once she had sent off a cheque to Lily and another to poor Edith; but she was thankful for the quiet months which her mourning robes and her aunt's fresh widowhood compelled them to spend together.

The acquisition of power made her serious; she scrutinised her power with a kind of tender ferocity, but was not eager to exercise it.

She began to do so during a stay of some weeks which she eventually made with her aunt in Paris, though in ways that will inevitably present themselves as trivial.

They were the ways most naturally imposed in a city in which the shops are the admiration of the world, and that were prescribed unreservedly by the guidance of Mrs.Touchett, who took a rigidly practical view of the transformation of her niece from a poor girl to a rich one.

"Now that you're a young woman of fortune you must know how to play the part--I mean to play it well," she said to Isabel once for all; and she added that the girl's first duty was to have everything handsome.