What could be a finer thing to live with than a high spirit attuned to softness?
For would not the softness be all for one's self, and the strenuousness for society, which admired the air of superiority?
What could be a happier gift in a companion than a quick, fanciful mind which saved one repetitions and reflected one's thought on a polished, elegant surface?
Osmond hated to see his thought reproduced literally--that made it look stale and stupid; he preferred it to be freshened in the reproduction even as "words" by music.

His egotism had never taken the crude form of desiring a dull wife; this lady's intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one--a plate that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it would give a decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of served dessert.

He found the silver quality in this perfection in Isabel; he could tap her imagination with his knuckle and make it ring.

He knew perfectly, though he had not been told, that their union enjoyed little favour with the girl's relations; but he had always treated her so completely as an independent person that it hardly seemed necessary to express regret for the attitude of her family.

Nevertheless, one morning, he made an abrupt allusion to it.