The scene had an extraordinary charm.

The air was almost solemnly still, and the large expanse of the landscape, with its garden-like culture and nobleness of outline, its teeming valley and delicately-fretted hills, its peculiarly human-looking touches of habitation, lay there in splendid harmony and classic grace.

"You seem so well pleased that I think you can be trusted to come back," Osmond said as he led his companion to one of the angles of the terrace.
"I shall certainly come back," she returned, "in spite of what you say about its being bad to live in Italy.

What was that you said about one's natural mission?
I wonder if I should forsake my natural mission if I were to settle in Florence." "A woman's natural mission is to be where she's most appreciated." "The point's to find out where that is." "Very true--she often wastes a great deal of time in the enquiry.

People ought to make it very plain to her." "Such a matter would have to be made very plain to me," smiled Isabel.
"I'm glad, at any rate, to hear you talk of settling.