Henrietta's second visit to Europe, however, was not apparently to have been made in vain; for just at the moment when Osmond had declared to Isabel that he really must object to that newspaper-woman, and Isabel had answered that it seemed to her he took Henrietta too hard, the good Mr.Bantling had appeared upon the scene and proposed that they should take a run down to Spain.
Henrietta's letters from Spain had proved the most acceptable she had yet published, and there had been one in especial, dated from the Alhambra and entitled 'Moors and Moonlight,' which generally passed for her masterpiece.

Isabel had been secretly disappointed at her husband's not seeing his way simply to take the poor girl for funny.

She even wondered if his sense of fun, or of the funny--which would be his sense of humour, wouldn't it ?--were by chance defective.

Of course she herself looked at the matter as a person whose present happiness had nothing to grudge to Henrietta's violated conscience.

Osmond had thought their alliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn't imagine what they had in common.