She recognised no embarrassments, and Isabel, considering this fact, determined for the fiftieth time to brush aside her own.

It seemed to her too, on the renewal of an intercourse which had virtually been interrupted, that her old ally was different, was almost detached--pushing to the extreme a certain rather artificial fear of being indiscreet.

Ralph Touchett, we know, had been of the opinion that she was prone to exaggeration, to forcing the note--was apt, in the vulgar phrase, to overdo it.

Isabel had never admitted this charge--had never indeed quite understood it; Madame Merle's conduct, to her perception, always bore the stamp of good taste, was always "quiet." But in this matter of not wishing to intrude upon the inner life of the Osmond family it at last occurred to our young woman that she overdid a little.

That of course was not the best taste; that was rather violent.
She remembered too much that Isabel was married; that she had now other interests; that though she, Madame Merle, had known Gilbert Osmond and his little Pansy very well, better almost than any one, she was not after all of the inner circle.