It certainly wouldn't be your husband's." Isabel had had three years to think over Mrs.Touchett's theory that Madame Merle had made Gilbert Osmond's marriage.

We know how she had at first received it.

Madame Merle might have made Gilbert Osmond's marriage, but she certainly had not made Isabel Archer's.

That was the work of--Isabel scarcely knew what: of nature, providence, fortune, of the eternal mystery of things.

It was true her aunt's complaint had been not so much of Madame Merle's activity as of her duplicity: she had brought about the strange event and then she had denied her guilt.