There's nothing new, unfortunately, in ignorance and stupidity.We see plenty of that in forms that offer themselves as a revelation of progress, of fight.A revelation of vulgarity! There's a certain kind of vulgarity which I believe is really new; I don't think there ever was anything like it before.Indeed I don't find vulgarity, at all, before the present century.You see a faint menace of it here and there in the last, but to-day the air has grown so dense that delicate things are literally not recognized.Now, we've liked you-!" With which he hesitated a moment, laying his hand gently on Goodwood's knee and smiling with a mixture of assurance and embarrassment."I'm going to say something extremely offensive and patronizing, but you must let me have the satisfaction of it.We've liked you because-because you've reconciled us a little to the future.If there are to be a certain number of people like you-a la bonne heure! I'm talking for my wife as well as for myself, you see.She speaks for me, my wife; why shouldn't I speak for her? We're as united, you know, as the candlestick and the snuffers.Am I assuming too much when I say that I think I've understood from you that your occupations have been-a-commercial? There's a danger in that, you know; but it's the way you have escaped that strikes us.Excuse me if my little compliment seems in execrable taste; fortunately my wife doesn't hear me.What I mean is that you might have been-a-what Iwas mentioning just now.The whole American world was in a conspiracy to make you so.But you resisted, you've something about you that saved you.And yet you're so modern, so modern; the most modern man we know! We shall always be delighted to see you again."I have said that Osmond was in good humour, and these remarks will give ample evidence of the fact.They were infinitely more personal than he usually cared to be, and if Caspar Goodwood had attended to them more closely he might have thought that the defence of delicacy was in rather odd hands.We may believe, however, that Osmond knew very well what he was about, and that if he chose to use the tone of patronage with a grossness not in his habits he had an excellent reason for the escapade.Goodwood had only a vague sense that he was laying it on somehow; he scarcely knew where the mixture was applied.Indeed he scarcely knew what Osmond was talking about; he wanted to be alone with Isabel, and that idea spoke louder to him than her husband's perfectly-pitched voice.He watched her talking with other people and wondered when she would be at liberty and whether he might ask her to go into one of the other rooms.His humour was not, like Osmond's, of the best; there was an element of dull rage in his consciousness of things.Up to this time he had not disliked Osmond personally; he had only thought him very well-informed and obliging and more than he had supposed like the person whom Isabel Archer would naturally marry.His host had won in the open field a great advantage over him, and Goodwood had too strong a sense of fair play to have been moved to underrate him on that account.He had not tried positively to think well of him; this was a flight of sentimental benevolence of which, even in the days when he came nearest to reconciling himself to what had happened, Goodwood was quite incapable.He accepted him as rather a brilliant personage of the amateurish kind, afflicted with a redundancy of leisure which it amused him to work off in little refinements of conversation.But he only half trusted him; he could never make out why the deuce Osmond should lavish refinements of any sort upon him.It made him suspect that he found some private entertainment in it, and it ministered to a general impression that his triumphant rival had in his composition a streak of perversity.He knew indeed that Osmond could have no reason to wish him evil; he had nothing to fear from him.He had carried off a supreme advantage and could afford to be kind to a man who had lost everything.It was true that Goodwood had at times grimly wished he were dead and would have liked to kill him; but Osmond had no means of knowing this, for practice had made the younger man perfect in the art of appearing inaccessible to-day to any violent emotion.He cultivated this art in order to deceive himself, but it was others that he deceived first.He cultivated it, moreover, with very limited success; of which there could be no better proof than the deep, dumb irritation that reigned in his soul when he heard Osmond speak of his wife's feelings as if he were commissioned to answer for them.
That was all he had had an ear for in what his host said to him this evening; he had been conscious that Osmond made more of a point even than usual of referring to the conjugal harmony prevailing at Palazzo Roccanera.He had been more careful than ever to speak as if he and his wife had all things in sweet community and it were as natural to each of them to say "we" as to say "I." In all this there was an air of intention that had puzzled and angered our poor Bostonian, who could only reflect for his comfort that Mrs.Osmond's relations with her husband were none of his business.He had no proof whatever that her husband misrepresented her, and if he judged her by the surface of things was bound to believe that she liked her life.She had never given him the faintest sign of discontent.Miss Stackpole had told him that she had lost her illusions, but writing for the papers had made Miss Stackpole sensational.She was too fond of early news.Moreover, since her arrival in Rome she had been much on her guard; she had pretty well ceased to flash her lantern at him.This indeed, it may be said for her, would have been quite against her conscience.She had now seen the reality of Isabel's situation, and it had inspired her with a just reserve.Whatever could be done to improve it the most useful form of assistance would not be to inflame her former lovers with a sense of her wrongs.Miss Stackpole continued to take a deep interest in the state of Mr.
