"I'm afraid you've suffered much," she once found occasion to say to her friend in response to some allusion that had appeared to reach far.
"What makes you think that?" Madame Merle asked with the amused smile of a person seated at a game of guesses. "I hope I haven't too much the droop of the misunderstood."
"No; but you sometimes say things that I think people who have always been happy wouldn't have found out."
"I haven't always been happy," said Madame Merle, smiling still, but with a mock gravity, as if she were telling a child a secret. "Such a wonderful thing!"
But Isabel rose to the irony. "A great many people give me the impression of never having for a moment felt anything."
"It's very true; there are many more iron pots certainly than porcelain. But you may depend on it th
