THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
THE PORTBAIT OF A LADY 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY JAMES, JR, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE EUROPEANS," ETC., ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1881. 
 
 The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved. 
 
CLAY AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, 
 BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 i. 
 
 UNDER certain circumstances there are few hours in life more 
 agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as 
 afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you 
 partake of the tea or not some people of course never do the 
 situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in 
 beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable 
 setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little 
 feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English 
 country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a 
 splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, 
 but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest 
 and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours j 
 but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had 
 grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense 
 turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed 
 that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief 
 source of one's enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. 
 Ytom five o'clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity ; 
 but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 eternity of pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking 
 their pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is 
 supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have 
 mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and 
 angular ; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep 
 wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been 
 served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory 
 talk, in front of him. The old man had his cup in his hand ; 
 it was an unusually large cup, of a different pattern from the 
 rest of the set, and painted in brilliant colours. He disposed 
 of its contents with much circumspection, holding it for a long 
 time close to his chin, with his face turned to the house. His 
 companions had either finished their tea or were indifferent to 
 their privilege ; they smoked cigarettes as they continued to 
 stroll. One of them, from time to time, as he passed, looked 
 with a certain attention at the elder man, who, unconscious of 
 observation, rested his eyes upon the rich red front of his 
 dwelling. The house that rose beyond the lawn was a structure 
 to repay such consideration, and was the most characteristic 
 object in the peculiarly English picture I have attempted to 
 sketch. 
 
 It stood upon a Ipw hill, above the river the river being the 
 Thames, at some forty miles from London. A long gabled front 
 of red brick, with the complexion of which time and the weather 
 had played all sorts of picturesque tricks, only, however, to 
 improve and refine it, presented itself to the lawn, with its 
 patches of ivy, its clustered chimneys, its windows smothered in 
 creepers. The house had a name and a history ; the old gentle- 
 man taking his tea would have been delighted to tell you these 
 things : how it had been built under Edward the Sixth, had 
 offered a night's hospitality to the great Elizabeth (whose august 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 person had extended itself upon a huge, magnificent, and terribly 
 angular bed which still formed the principal honour of the 
 sleeping apartments), had been a good deal bruised and defaced 
 in Cromwell's wars, and then, under the Restoration, repaired 
 and much enlarged ; and how, finally, after having been remodelled 
 and disfigured in the eighteenth century, it had passed into the 
 careful keeping of a shrewd American banker, who had bought 
 it originally because (owing to circumstances too complicated to 
 set forth) it was offered at a great bargain ; bought it with much 
 grumbling at its ugliness, its antiquity, its incommodity, and 
 who now, at the end of twenty years, had become conscious of a 
 real aesthetic passion for it, so that he knew all its points, and 
 would tell you just where to stand to see them in combination, 
 and just the hour when the shadows of its various protuberances 
 which fell" so softly upon the warm, weary brickwork were 
 of the right measure. Besides this, as I have said, he could 
 have counted off most of the successive owners and occupants, 
 several of whom were known to general fame : doing so, however, 
 with an undemonstrative conviction that the latest phase of its 
 destiny was not the least honourable. The front of the house, 
 overlooking that portion of the lawn with which we are con- 
 cerned, was not the entrance-front ; this was in quite another 
 quarter. Privacy here reigned supreme, and the wide carpet 
 of turf that covered the level hill-top seemed but the ex- 
 tension of a luxurious interior. The great still oaks and 
 beeches flung down a shade as dense as that of velvet curtains; 
 and the place was furnished, like a room, with cushioned 
 seats, with rich-coloured rugs, with the books and papers that 
 lay upon the grass. The river was at some distance ; where 
 the ground began to slope, the lawn, properly speaking, ceased. 
 
 But it was none the less a charming walk down to the water. 
 
 B 2 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 The old gentleman at the tea-table, who had come from 
 America thirty years before, had brought with him, at the top 
 of his baggage, his American physiognomy ; and he had not 
 only brought it with him, but he had kept it in the best order, 
 so that, if necessary, he might have taken it back to his own 
 country with perfect confidence. But at present, obviously, he 
 was not likely to displace himself ; his journeys were over, and 
 he was taking the rest that precedes the great rest. He had a 
 narrow, clean-shaven face, with evenly distributed features, and 
 an expression of placid acuteness. It was evidently a face in 
 which the range of expression was not large ; so that the air of 
 contented shrewdness was all the more of a merit. It seemed 
 to tell that he had been successful in life, but it seemed to tell 
 also that his success had not been exclusive and invidious, but 
 had had much of the inoffensiveness of failure. He had certainly 
 had a great experience of men ; but there was an almost rustic 
 simplicity in the faint smile that played upon his lean, spacious 
 cheek, and lighted up his humorous eye, as he at last slowly 
 and carefully deposited his big tea-cup upon the table. He was 
 neatly dressed, in well-brushed black ; but a shawl was folded 
 upon his knees, and his feet were encased in thick, embroidered 
 slippers. A beautifiul collie dog lay upon the grass near his 
 chair, watching the master's face almost as tenderly as the master 
 contemplated the still more magisterial physiognomy of the 
 house ; and a little bristling, bustling terrier bestowed a desultory 
 attendance upon the other gentlemen. 
 
 One of these was a remarkably well-made man of five-and- 
 thirty, with a face as English as that of the old gentleman I 
 have just sketched was something else ; a noticeably handsome 
 face, fresh-coloured, fair, and frank, with firm, straight features, 
 a lively grey eye, and the rich adornment of a chestnut beard. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 This person had a certain fortunate, brilliant exceptional look - 
 the air of a happy temperament fertilised by a high civilisation 
 which would have made almost any observer envy him at a 
 venture. He was booted and spurred, as if he had dismounted 
 from a long ride ; he wore a white hat, which looked too large 
 for him; he held his two hands behind him, and in one of 
 them a large, white, well-shaped fist was crumpled a pair of 
 soiled dog-skin gloves. 
 
 His companion, measuring the length of the lawn beside him, 
 was a person of quite another pattern, who, although he might 
 have excited grave curiosity, would not, like the other, have 
 provoked you to wish yourself, almost blindly, in his place. 
 Tall, lean, loosely and feebly put together, he had an ugly, 
 sickly, witty, charming face furnished, but by no means 
 decorated, with a straggling moustache and whisker. He 
 looked clever and ill a combination by no means felicitous ; 
 and he wore a brown velvet jacket. He carried his hands in 
 his pockets, and there was something in the way he did it that 
 showed the habit was inveterate. His gait had a shambling, 
 wandering quality ; he was not very firm on his legs. As I 
 have said, whenever he passed the old man in the chair, he 
 rested his eyes upon him ; and at this moment, with their faces 
 brought into relation, you would easily have seen that they 
 were father and son. 
 
 The father caught his son's eye at last, and gave him a mild, 
 responsive smile. 
 
 " I am getting on very well," he said. 
 
 " Have you drunk your tea 1 " asked the son. 
 
 "Yes, and enjoyed it." 
 
 " Shall I give you some more ? " 
 
 The old man considered, placidly. 
 
THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Well, I guess I will wait and see." 
 
 He had, in speaking, the American tone. 
 
 " Are you cold 1 " his son inquired. 
 
 The father slowly rubbed his legs. 
 
 " Well, I don't know. I can't tell till I feel." 
 
 " Perhaps some one might feel for you," said the younger 
 man, laughing. 
 
 " Oh, I hope some one will always feel for me ! Don't you 
 feel for me, Lord Warburton ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, immensely," said the gentleman addressed as Lord 
 Warburton, promptly. " I am bound to say you look wonder- 
 fully comfortable." 
 
 "Well, I suppose I am, in most respects." And the old 
 man looked down at his green shawl, and smoothed it over his 
 knees. " The fact is, I have been comfortable so many years 
 that I suppose I have got so used to it I don't know it." 
 
 "Yes, that's the bore of comfort," said Lord Warburton. 
 " We only know when we are uncomfortable." 
 
 " It strikes me that we are rather particular," said his 
 companion. 
 
 " Oh yes, there is no doubt we're particular," Lord Warbur- 
 ton murmured. , 
 
 And then the three men remained silent a while ; the two 
 younger ones standing looking down at the other, who presently 
 asked for more tea. 
 
 " I should think you would be very unhappy with that 
 shawl," said Lord Warburton, while his companion filled the 
 old man's cup again. 
 
 " Oh no, he must have the shawl ! " cried the gentleman in 
 the velvet coat. " Don't put such ideas as that into his head." 
 
 " It belongs to my wife," said the old man, simply. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Oh, if it's for sentimental reasons " And Lord War- 
 burton made a gesture of apology. 
 
 " I suppose I must give it to her when she comes," the old 
 man went on. 
 
 " You will please to do nothing of the kind. You will keep 
 it to cover your poor old legs." 
 
 " Well, you mustn't abuse my legs," said the old man. " I 
 guess they are as good as yours." 
 
 " Oh, you are perfectly free to abuse mine," his son replied, 
 giving him his tea. 
 
 " Well, we are two lame ducks ; I don't think there is much 
 difference." 
 
 " I am much obliged to you for calling me a duck. How is 
 your tea ? " 
 
 "Well, it's rather hot." 
 
 u That's intended to be a merit. " 
 
 " Ah, there's a great deal of merit," murmured the old man, 
 kindly. " He's a very good nurse, Lord Warburton." 
 
 " Isn't he a bit clumsy] " asked his lordship. 
 
 " Oh no, he's not clumsy considering that he's an invalid 
 himself. He's a very good nurse for a sick-nurse. I call him 
 my sick-nurise because he's sick himself." 
 
 " Oh, come, daddy ! " the ugly young man exclaimed. 
 
 "Well, you are; I wish you weren't. But I suppose you 
 can't help it." 
 
 " I might try : that's an idea," said the young man. 
 
 " Were you ever sick, Lord Warburton 1 " his father asked. 
 
 Lord Warburton considered a moment. 
 
 " Yes, sir, once, in the Persian Gulf." 
 
 " He is making light of you, daddy," said the other young 
 man. " That's a sort of joke." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Well, there seem to be so many sorts now," daddy replied, 
 serenely. " You don't look as if you had been sick, any way, 
 Lord Warburton." 
 
 " He is sick of life ; he was just telling me so ; going on 
 fearfully about it," said Lord Warburton' s friend. 
 
 " Is that true, sir 1 " asked the old man gravely. 
 
 " If it is, your son gave me no consolation. He's a wretched 
 fellow to talk to a regular cynic. He doesn't seem to believe 
 anything." 
 
 "That's another sort of joke," said the person accused of 
 cynicism. 
 
 " It's because his health is so poor," his father explained to 
 Lord Warburton. "It affects his mind, and colours his way 
 of looking at things ; he seems to feel as if he had never had 
 a chance. But it's almost' entirely theoretical, you know ; it 
 doesn't seem to affect his spirits. I have hardly ever seen him 
 when he wasn't cheerful- about as he is at present. He often 
 cheers me up." 
 
 The young man so described looked at Lord Warburton and 
 laughed. 
 
 " Is it a glowing eulogy or an accusation of levity ] Should 
 you like me to carry out my theories, daddy ? " 
 
 " By Jove, we should see some queer things ! " cried Lord 
 Warburton. 
 
 " I hope you haven't taken up that sort of tone," said the 
 old man. 
 
 " Warburton's tone is worse than mine ; he pretends to be 
 bored. I am not in the least bored ; I find life only too 
 interesting." 
 
 " Ah, too interesting ; you shouldn't allow it to be that, you 
 know I" 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " I am never Jbored when I come here," said Lord Warburton. 
 " One gets such uncommonly good talk." 
 
 " Is that another sort of joke 1 " asked the old man. " You 
 have no excuse for being bored anywhere. When I was your 
 age, I had never heard of such a thing." 
 
 " You must have developed very late." 
 
 "No, I developed very quick; that was just the reason. 
 When I was twenty years old, I was very highly developed 
 indeed. I was working, tooth and nail. You wouldn't be 
 bored if you had something to do ; but all you young men are 
 too idle. You think too much of your pleasure. You are 
 too fastidious, and too indolent, and too rich." 
 
 "Oh, I say," cried Lord Warburton, "you're hardly the 
 person to accuse a fellow-creature of being too rich ! " 
 
 "Do you mean because I am a banker]" asked the old 
 man. 
 
 " Because of that, if you like ; and because you are so ridicul- 
 ously wealthy." 
 
 " He isn't very rich," said the other young man, indicating his 
 father. " He has given away an immense deal of money." 
 
 "Well, I suppose it was his own," said Lord Warburton; 
 " and in that case could there be a better proof of wealth 1 Let 
 not a public benefactor talk of one's being too fond of pleasure." 
 
 " Daddy is very fond of pleasure of other people's." 
 
 The old man shook his head. 
 
 " I don't pretend to have contributed anything to the amuse- 
 ment of my contemporaries." 
 
 " My dear father, you are too modest ! " 
 
 " That's a kind of joke, sir," said Lord Warburton. 
 
 " You young men have too many jokes. When there are no 
 jokes, you have nothing left." 
 
10 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 "Fortunately there are always more jokes," the ugly young 
 man remarked. 
 
 " I don't believe it I believe things are getting more serious. 
 You young men will find that out." 
 
 "The increasing seriousness of things that is the great 
 opportunity of jokes." 
 
 " They will have to be grim jokes," said the old man. " I am 
 convinced there will be great changes ; and not all for the 
 better." 
 
 " I quite agree with you, sir," Lord Warburton declared. 
 " I am very sure there will be great changes, and that all sorts 
 of queer things will happen. That's why I find so much 
 difficulty in applying your advice ; you know you told me the 
 other day that I ought to Hake hold' of something. One 
 hesitates to take hold of a thing that may the next moment be 
 knocked sky-high." 
 
 "You ought to take hold of a pretty woman," said his 
 companion. "He is trying hard to fall in love," he added, by 
 way of explanation, to his father. 
 
 " The pretty women themselves may be sent flying ! " Lord 
 Warburton exclaimed. 
 
 "No, no, they will be firm," the old man rejoined; "they 
 will not be affected by the social and political changes I just 
 referred to." 
 
 "You mean they won't be abolished? Very well, then, I 
 will lay hands on one as soon as possible, and tie her round my 
 neck as a life-preserver." 
 
 "The ladies will save us," said the old man; "that is, the 
 best of them will for I make a difference between them. Make 
 up to a good one and marry her, and your life will become much 
 more interesting." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 11 
 
 A momentary silence marked perhaps on the part of his 
 auditors a sense of the magnanimity of this speech, for it was a 
 secret neither for his son nor for his visitor that his own 
 experiment in matrimony had not been a happy one. As he 
 said, however, he made a difference ; and these words may have 
 been intended as a confession of personal error ; though of 
 course it was not in place for either of his companions to remark 
 that apparently the lady of his choice had not been one of the 
 best. 
 
 " If I marry an interesting woman, I shall be interested : is 
 that what you say 1 " Lord Warburton asked. " I am not at all 
 keen about marrying your son misrepresented me ; but there 
 is no knowing what an interesting woman might do with me." 
 
 "I should like to see your idea of an interesting woman," said 
 his friend. 
 
 " My dear fellow, you can't see ideas especially such ethereal 
 ones as mine. If I could only see it myself that would be a 
 great step in advance." 
 
 " Well, you may fall in love with whomsoever you please ; 
 but you must not fall in love with my niece," said the old man. 
 
 His son broke into a laugh. " He will think you mean that 
 as a provocation ! My dear father, you have lived with the 
 English for thirty years, and you have picked up a good many 
 of the things they say. But you have never learned the things 
 they don't say ! " 
 
 "I say what I please," the old man declared, with all his 
 serenity. 
 
 " I haven't the honour of knowing your niece," Lord War- 
 burton said. " I think it is the first time I have heard of her." 
 
 " She is a niece of my wife's ; Mrs. Touchett brings her to 
 England." UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
12 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 Then young Mr. Touchett explained. "My mother, you 
 know, has been spending the winter in America, and we are 
 expecting her back. She writes that she has discovered a niece, 
 and that she has invited her to come with her." 
 
 " I see very kind of her/' said Lord Warburton. " Is the 
 young lady interesting ? " 
 
 " We hardly know more about her than you ; my mother has 
 not gone into details. She chiefly communicates with us by 
 means of telegrams, and her telegrams are rather inscrutable. 
 They say women don't know how to write them, but my mother 
 has thoroughly mastered the art of condensation. ' Tired America, 
 hot weather awful, return England with niece, first steamer, 
 decent cabin.' That's the sort of message we get from her that 
 was the last that came. But there had been another before, 
 which I think contained the first mention of the niece. 'Changed 
 hotel, very bad, impudent clerk, address here. Taken sister's girl, 
 died last year, go to Europe, two sisters, quite independent.' 
 Over that my father and I have scarcely stopped puzzling ; it 
 seems to admit of so many interpretations." 
 
 "There is one thing very clear in it," said the old man; 
 " she has given the hotel-clerk a dressing." 
 
 " I am not sure even of that, since he has driven her from the 
 field. We thought at first that the sister mentioned might be 
 the sister of the clerk ; but the subsequent mention of a niece 
 seems to prove that the allusion is to one of my aunts. Then 
 there was a question as to whose the two other sisters were ; they 
 are probably two of my late aunt's daughters. But who is 
 ' quite independent,' and in what sense is the term used 1 that 
 point is not yet settled. Does the expression apply more 
 particularly to the young lady my mother has adopted, or does it 
 characterise her sisters equally ? and is it used in a moral or in 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 13 
 
 a financial sense 1 Does it mean that they have been left well 
 off, or that they wish to be under no obligations 1 or does it 
 simply mean that they are fond of their own way?" 
 
 " Whatever else it means, it is pretty sure to mean that," Mr. 
 Touchett remarked. 
 
 " You will see for yourself," said Lord Warburton. " When 
 does Mrs. Touchett arrive ? " 
 
 " We are quite in the dark ; as soon as she can find a decent 
 cabin. She may be waiting for it yet ; on the other hand, she 
 may already have disembarked in England." 
 
 " In that case she would probably have telegraphed to you." 
 
 "She never telegraphs when you would expect it only 
 when you don't," said the old man. " She likes to drop on me 
 suddenly ; she thinks she will find me doing something wrong. 
 She has never done so yet, but she is not discouraged." 
 
 " It's her independence," her son explained, more favourably. 
 "Whatever that of those young ladies may be, her own is a 
 match for it. She likes to do everything for herself, and has no 
 belief in any one's power to help her. She thinks me of no 
 more use than a postage-stamp without gum, and she would 
 never forgive me if I should presume to go to Liverpool to meet 
 her." 
 
 " Will you at least let me know when your cousin arrives 1 " 
 Lord Warburton asked. 
 
 " Only on the condition I have mentioned that you don't 
 fall in love with her ! " Mr. Touchett declared. 
 
 "That strikes me as hard. Don't you think me good 
 enough ? " 
 
 " I think you too good because I shouldn't like her to marry 
 you. She hasn't come here to look for a husband, I hope ; so 
 many young ladies are doing that, as if there were no good ones 
 
14 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 at home. Then she is probably engaged ; American girls are 
 usually engaged, I believe. Moreover, I am not sure, after all, 
 that you would be a good husband." 
 
 " Very likely she is engaged ; I have known a good many 
 American girls, and they always were ; but I could never see 
 that it made any difference, upon my word ! As for my being 
 a good husband, I am not sure of that either ; one can but 
 try!" 
 
 " Try as much as you please, but don't try on my niece," 
 said the old man, whose opposition to the idea was broadly 
 humorous. 
 
 " Ah, well," said Lord Warburton, with a humour broader 
 still, " perhaps, after all, she is not worth trying on !" 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 15 
 
 II. 
 
 WHILE this exchange of pleasantries took place between the 
 two, Ralph Touchett wandered away a little, with his usual 
 slouching gait, his hands in his pockets, and his little rowdyish 
 terrier at his heels. His face was turned towards the house, but 
 his eyes were bent, musingly, upon the lawn ; so that he had 
 been an object of observation to a person who had just made 
 her appearance in the doorway of the dwelling for some 
 moments before he perceived her. His attention was called 
 to her by the conduct of his dog, who had suddenly darted 
 forward, with a little volley of shrill barks, in which the note 
 of welcome, however, was more sensible than that of defiance. 
 The person in question was a young lady, who seemed immedi- 
 ately to interpret the greeting of the little terrier. He advanced 
 with great rapidity, and stood at her feet, looking up and barking 
 hard ; whereupon, without hesitation, she stooped and caught 
 him in her hands, holding him face to face while he continued his 
 joyous demonstration. His master now had had time to follow 
 and to see that Bunchie's new friend was a tall girl in a black 
 dress, who at first sight looked pretty. She was bare-headed, as 
 if she were staying in the house a fact which conveyed per- 
 plexity to the son of its master, conscious of that immunity from 
 visitors which had for some time been rendered necessary by the 
 
16 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 latter's ill-health. Meantime the two other gentlemen had also 
 taken note of the new-comer. 
 
 " Dear me, who is that strange woman ? " Mr. Touchett had 
 asked. 
 
 " Perhaps it is Mrs. Touchett's niece the independent young 
 lady," Lord Warburton suggested. " I think she must be, from 
 the way she handles the dog." 
 
 The collie, too, had now allowed his attention to be diverted, 
 and he trotted toward the young lady in the doorway, slowly 
 setting his tail in motion as he went. 
 
 " But where is my wife, then ? " murmured the old man. 
 
 " I suppose the young lady has left her somewhere : that's a 
 part of the independence." 
 
 The girl spoke to Ralph, smiling, while she still held up the 
 terrier. " Is this your little dog, sir 1 " 
 
 " He was mine a moment ago ; but you have suddenly 
 acquired a remarkable air of property in him." 
 
 " Couldn't we share him 1 " asked the girl. " He's such a little 
 darling." 
 
 Ealph looked at her a moment ; she was unexpectedly pretty. 
 "You may have him altogether," he said. 
 
 The young lady f seemed to have a great deal of confidence, 
 both in herself and in others ; but this abrupt generosity made 
 her blush. " I ought to tell you that I am probably your 
 cousin/' she murmured, putting down the dog. " And here's 
 another ! " she added quickly, as the collie came up. 
 
 " Probably ? " the young man exclaimed, laughing. " I sup- 
 posed it was quite settled ! Have you come with my 
 mother 1 " 
 
 " Yes, half-an-hour ago." 
 
 " And has she deposited you and departed again ? " 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 17 
 
 " No, she went straight to her room ; and she told me that, if 
 I should see you, I was to say to you that you must come to her 
 there at a quarter to seven." 
 
 The young man looked at his watch. " Thank you very 
 much; I shall be punctual." And then he looked at his cousin. 
 "You are very welcome here," he went on. "I am delighted 
 to see you." 
 
 She was looking at everything, with an eye that denoted quick 
 perception at her companion, at the two dogs, at the two 
 gentlemen under the trees, at the beautiful scene that surrounded 
 her. " I have never seen anything so lovely as this place," she 
 said. " I have been all over the house ; it's too enchanting." 
 
 " I am sorry you should have been here so long without our 
 knowing it." 
 
 " Your mother told me that in England people arrived very 
 quietly ; so I thought it was all right. Is one of those gentle- 
 men your father 1 " 
 
 " Yes, the elder one the one sitting down," said Ealph. 
 
 The young girl gave a laugh. " I don't suppose it's the other. 
 Who is the other?" 
 
 " He is a friend of ours Lord Warburton." 
 
 " Oh, I hoped there would be a lord ; it's just like a novel ! " 
 And then " you adorable creature ! " she suddenly cried, 
 stooping down and picking up the little terrier again. 
 
 She remained standing where they had met, making no offer 
 to advance or to speak to Mr. Touchett, and while she lingered 
 in the doorway, slim and charming, her interlocutor wondered 
 whether she expected the old man to come and pay her his 
 respects. American girls were used to a great deal of deference, 
 and it had been intimated that this one had a high ; spirit. 
 
 Indeed, Ealph could see that in her face. 
 
 VOL. i. c 
 
18 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Won't you come and make acquaintance with my father ? '' 
 he nevertheless ventured to ask. "He is old and infirm he 
 doesn't leave his chair." 
 
 " Ah, poor man, I am very sorry ! " the girl exclaimed, 
 immediately moving forward. " I got the impression from your 
 mother that he was rather rather strong." 
 
 Ralph Touchett was silent a moment. 
 
 " She has not seen him for a year." 
 
 " Well, he has got a lovely place to sit. Come along, little 
 
 " It's a dear old place," said the young man, looking sidewise 
 at his neighbour. 
 
 " What's his name 1 " she asked, her attention having reverted 
 to the terrier again. 
 
 " My father's name ? " 
 
 t Yes," said the young lady, humorously ; " but don't tell him 
 I asked you." 
 
 They had come by this time to where old Mr. Touchett was 
 sitting, and he slowly got up Jrom his chair to introduce 
 himself. 
 
 " My mother has arrived," said Ralph, " and this is Miss 
 Archer." 
 
 The old man placed his two hands on her shoulders, looked 
 at her a moment with extreme benevolence, and then gallantly 
 kissed her. 
 
 " It is a great pleasure to me to see you here ; but I wish you 
 had given us a chance to receive you." 
 
 " Oh, we were received," said the girl. " There were about a 
 dozen servants in the hall. And there was an old woman 
 curtseying at the gate." 
 
 " We can do better than that if we have notice ! " And the 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 19 
 
 old man stood there, smiling, rubbing his hands, and slowly 
 shaking his head at her. "But Mrs. Touchett doesn't like 
 receptions." 
 
 " She went straight to her room." 
 
 " Yes and locked herself in. She always does that. Well, 
 I suppose I shall see her next week." And Mrs. Touchett's 
 husband slowly resumed his former posture. 
 
 " Before that," said Miss Archer. " She is coming down to 
 dinner at eight o'clock. Don't you forget a quarter to seven," 
 she added, turning with a smile to Ealph. 
 
 " What is to happen at a quarter to seven It " 
 
 " I am to see my mother," said Ralph. 
 
 " Ah, happy boy ! " the old man murmured. " You must sit 
 down you must have some tea," he went on, addressing his 
 wife's niece. 
 
 " They gave me some tea in my room the moment I arrived," 
 this young lady answered. " I am sorry you are out of health," 
 she added, resting her eyes upon her venerable host. 
 
 " Oh, I'm an old man, my dear; it's time for me to be old. 
 But I shall be the better for having you here." 
 
 She had been looking all round her again at the lawn, the 
 great trees, the reedy, silvery Thames, the beautiful old house ; 
 and while engaged in this survey, she had also narrowly scruti- 
 nised her companions ; a comprehensiveness of observation easily 
 conceivable on the part of a young woman who was evidently 
 both intelligent and excited. She had seated herself, and had 
 put away the little dog ; her white hands, in her lap, were folded 
 upon her black dress ; her head was erect, her eye brilliant, her 
 flexible figure turned itself lightly this way and that, in sym- 
 pathy with the alertness with which she evidently caught im- 
 pressions. Her impressions were numerous, and they were all 
 
 c 2 
 
20 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 reflected in a clear, still smile. "I have never seen anything so 
 beautiful as this," she declared. 
 
 " It's looking very well," said Mr. Touchett. " I know the 
 way it strikes you. I have been through all that. But you are 
 very beautiful yourself," he added with a politeness by no means 
 crudely jocular, and with the happy consciousness that his 
 advanced age gave him the privilege of saying such things 
 even to young girls who might possibly take alarm at them. 
 
 What degree of alarm this young girl took need not be exactly 
 measured ; she instantly rose, however, with a blush which was 
 not a refutation. 
 
 " Oh yes, of course, I'm lovely ! " she exclaimed quickly, with 
 a little laugh. " How old is your house ] Is it Elizabethan 1 " 
 
 " It's early Tudor," said Ralph Touchett. 
 
 She turned toward him, watching his face a little. " Early 
 Tudor 1 How very delightful ! And I suppose there are a great 
 many others." 
 
 " There are many much better ones." 
 
 " Don't say that, my son ! " the old man protested. " There 
 is nothing better than this." 
 
 " I have got a very good one ; I think in some respects it's 
 rather better," said Lord Warburton, who as yet had not spoken, 
 but who had kept an attentive eye upon Miss Archer. He bent 
 towards her a little smiling ; he had an excellent manner with 
 women. The girl appreciated it in an instant ; she had not for- 
 gotten that this was Lord Warburton. " I should like very 
 much to show it to you," he added. 
 
 " Don't believe him," cried the old man ; " don't look at it ! 
 It's a wretched old barrack not to be compared with this." 
 
 " I don't know I can't judge," said the girl, smiling at Lord 
 Warburton. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 21 
 
 In this discussion, Ralph Touchett took no interest whatever ; 
 he stood with his hands in his pockets, looking greatly as if 
 he should like to renew his conversation with his new-found 
 cousin. 
 
 " Are you very fond of dogs 1 " he inquired, by way of begin- 
 ning ; and it was an awkward beginning for a clever man. 
 
 " Very fond of them indeed." 
 
 " You must keep the terrier, you know," he went on, still 
 awkwardly. 
 
 " I will keep him while I am here, with pleasure." 
 
 " That will be for a long time, I hope." 
 
 " You are very kind. I hardly know. My aunt must settle 
 that." 
 
 " I will settle it with her at a quarter to seven." And Ralph 
 looked at his watch again. 
 
 " I am glad to be here at all," said the girl. 
 
 " I don't believe you allow things to be settled for you." 
 
 " Oh yes ; if they are settled as I like them." 
 
 " I shall settle this as I like it," said Ralph. " It's most 
 unaccountable that we should never have known you." 
 
 " I was there you had only to come and see me." 
 
 " There ? Where do you mean 1 " 
 
 " In the United States : in New York, and Albany, and other 
 places." 
 
 " I have been there all over, but I never saw you. I can't 
 make it out." 
 
 Miss Archer hesitated a moment. 
 
 " It was because there had been some disagreement between 
 your mother and -my father, after my mother's death, which took 
 place when I was a child. In consequence of it, we never 
 expected to see you." 
 
22 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Ah, but I don't embrace all my mother's quarrels Heaven 
 forbid ! " the young man cried. " You have lately lost your 
 father 1 " he went on, more gravely. 
 
 " Yes ; more than a year ago. After that my aunt was very 
 kind to me ; she came to see me, and proposed that I should 
 come to Europe." 
 
 " I see," said Ralph. " She has adopted you." 
 
 " Adopted me ? " The girl stared, and her blush came back 
 to her, together with a momentary look of pain, which gave her 
 interlocutor some alarm. He had under-estimated the effect of his 
 words. Lord Warburton, who appeared constantly desirous of 
 a nearer view of Miss Archer, strolled toward the two cousins at 
 the moment, and as he did so, she rested her startled eyes upon 
 him. " Oh, no ; she has not adopted me," she said. " I am 
 not a candidate for adoption." 
 
 " I beg a thousand pardons," Ealph murmured. " I meant 
 I meant " He hardly knew what he meant. 
 
 " You meant she has taken me up. Yes ; she likes to take 
 people up. She has been very kind to me ; but," she added, 
 with a certain visible eagerness of desire to be explicit, " I am 
 very fond of my liberty." 
 
 " Are you talking about Mrs. Touchett ? " the old man called 
 out from his chair. " Come here, my dear, and tell me about 
 her. I am always thankful for information." 
 
 The girl hesitated a moment, smiling. 
 
 " She is really very benevolent," she answered ; and then she 
 went over to her uncle, whose mirth was excited by her words. 
 
 Lord Warburton was left standing with Ralph Touchett, to 
 whom in a moment he said 
 
 " You wished a while ago to see my idea of an interesting 
 woman. There it is ! " 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 23 
 
 III. 
 
 MRS. TOUCHETT was certainly a person of many oddities, of 
 which her behaviour on returning to her husband's house after 
 many months was a noticeable specimen. She had her own 
 way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest descrip- 
 tion of a character which, although it was by no means without 
 benevolence, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of softness. 
 Mrs. Touchett might do a great deal of good, but she never 
 pleased. This way of her own, of which she was so fond, was 
 not intrinsically offensive it was simply very sharply distin- 
 guished from the ways of others. The edges of her conduct 
 were so very clear-cut that for susceptible persons it sometimes 
 had a wounding effect. This purity of outline was visible in 
 her deportment during the first hours of her return from 
 America, under circumstances in which it might have seemed 
 that her first act would have been to exchange greetings with 
 her husband and son. Mrs. Touchett, for reasons which she 
 deemed excellent, always retired on such occasions into impene- 
 trable seclusion, postponing the more sentimental ceremony until 
 she had achieved a toilet which had the less reason to be of high 
 importance as neither beauty nor vanity were concerned in it. 
 She was a plain-faced old woman, without coquetry and without 
 any great elegance, but with an extreme respect for her own 
 
24 THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 motives. She was usually prepared to explain these when the 
 explanation was asked as a favour ; and in such a case they 
 proved totally different from those that had been attributed to 
 her. She was virtually separated from her husband, but she 
 appeared to perceive nothing irregular in the situation. It had 
 become apparent, at an early stage of their relations, that they 
 should never desire the same thing at the same moment, and this 
 fact had prompted her to rescue disagreement from the vulgar 
 realm of accident. She did what she could to erect it into a 
 law a much more edifying aspect of it by going to live 
 in Florence, where she bought a house and established herself; 
 leaving her husband in England to take care of his bank. This 
 arrangement greatly pleased her ; it was so extremely definite. 
 It struck her husband in the same light, in a foggy square in 
 London, where it was at times the most definite fact he discerned ; 
 but he would have preferred that discomfort should have a 
 greater vagueness. To agree to disagree had cost him an effort ; 
 he was ready to agree to almost anything but that, and saw no 
 reason why either assent or dissent should be so terribly consist- 
 ent. Mrs. Touchett indulged in no regrets nor speculations, 
 and usually came once a year to spend a month with her hus- 
 band, a period during which she apparently took pains to con- 
 vince him that she had adopted the right system. She was not 
 fond of England, and had three or four reasons for it to which 
 she currently alluded ; they bore upon minor points of British 
 civilisation, but for Mrs. Touchett they amply justified non- 
 residence. She detested bread-sauce, which, as she said, looked 
 like a poultice and tasted like soap ; she objected to the con- 
 sumption of beer by her maid-servants ; and she affirmed that 
 the British laundress (Mrs. Touchett was very particular about 
 the appearance of her linen) was not a mistress of her art. At 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 25 
 
 fixed intervals she paid a visit to her own country; but this last 
 one had been longer than any of its predecessors. 
 
 She had taken up her niece there was little doubt of that. 
 One wet afternoon, some four months earlier than the occurrence 
 lately narrated, this young lady had been seated alone with a 
 book. To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did 
 not press upon her ; for her love of knowledge had a fertilising 
 quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, 
 however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival 
 of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel. The visitor had 
 not been announced; the girl heard her at last walking about 
 the adjoining room. It was an old house at Albany a large, 
 square, double house, with a notice of sale in the windows of the 
 parlour. There were two entrances, one of which had long been 
 out of use, but had never been removed. They were exactly 
 alike large white doors, with an arched frame and wide side- 
 lights, perched upon little " stoops " of red stone, which descended 
 sidewise to the brick pavement of the street. The two houses 
 together formed a single dwelling, the party-wall having been 
 removed and the rooms placed in communication. These rooms, 
 above-stairs, were extremely numerous, and were painted all over 
 exactly alike, in a yellowish white which had grown sallow with 
 time. On the third floor there was a sort of arched passage, 
 connecting the two sides of the house, which Isabel and her 
 sisters used in their childhood to call the tunnel, and which, 
 though it was short and well-lighted, always seemed to the girl 
 to be strange and lonely, especially on winter afternoons. She 
 had been in the house, at different periods, as a child ; in those 
 days her grandmother lived there. Then there had been an 
 absence of ten years, followed by a return to Albany before her 
 father's death. Her grandmother, old Mrs. Archer, had exer- 
 
26 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 cised, chiefly within the limits of the family, a large hospitality 
 in the early period, and the little girls oftqn spent weeks under 
 her roof weeks of which Isabel had the happiest memory. The 
 manner of life was different from that of her own home larger, 
 more plentiful, more sociable ; the discipline of the nursery was 
 delightfully vague, and the opportunity of listening to the con- 
 versation of one's elders (which with Isabel was a highly- valued 
 pleasure) almost unbounded. There was a constant coming and 
 going ; her grandmother's sons and daughters, and their children, 
 appeared to be in the enjoyment of standing invitations to stay 
 with her, so that the house offered, to a certain extent, the appear- 
 ance of a bustling provincial inn, kept by a gentle old landlady 
 who sighed a great deal and never presented a bill. Isabel, of 
 course, knew nothing about bills ; but even as a child she thought 
 her grandmother's dwelling picturesque. There was a covered 
 piazza behind it, furnished with a swing, which was a source of 
 tremulous interest ; and beyond this was a long garden, sloping 
 down to the stable, and containing certain capital peach-trees. 
 Isabel had stayed with her grandmother at various seasons ; but, 
 somehow, all her visits had a flavour of peaches. On the other 
 side, opposite, across the street, was an old house that was called 
 the Dutch House a peculiar structure, dating from the earliest 
 colonial time, composed of bricks that had been painted yellow, 
 crowned with a gable that was pointed out to strangers, defended 
 by a rickety wooden paling, and standing sidewise to the street. 
 It was occupied by a primary school for children of both sexes, 
 kept in an amateurish manner by a demonstrative lady, of whom 
 Isabel's chief recollection was that her hair was puffed out very 
 much at the temples and that she was the widow of some one 
 of consequence. The little girl had been offered the opportunity 
 of laying a foundation of knowledge in this establishment ; but 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 27 
 
 having spent a single day in it, she had expressed great disgust 
 with the place, and had been allowed to stay at home, where in 
 the September days, when the windows of the Dutch House 
 were open, she used to hear the hum of childish voices repeating 
 the multiplication table an incident in which the elation of 
 liberty and the pain of exclusion were indistinguishably mingled. 
 The foundation of her knowledge was really laid in the idleness 
 of her grandmother's house, where, as most of the other inmates 
 were not reading people, she had uncontrolled use of a library 
 full of books with frontispieces, which she used to climb upon 
 a chair to take down. When she had found one to her taste 
 she was guided in the selection chiefly by the frontispiece she 
 carried it into a mysterious apartment which lay beyond the 
 library, and which was called, traditionally, no one knew why, 
 the office. "Whose office it had been, and at what period it had 
 flourished, she never learned ; it was enough for her that it 
 contained an echo and a pleasant musty smell, and that it was 
 a chamber of disgrace for old pieces of furniture, whose infirmities 
 were not always apparent (so that the disgrace seemed unmerited, 
 and rendered them victims of injustice), and with which, in the 
 manner of children, she had established relations almost human, 
 or dramatic. There was an old haircloth sofa, in especial, to 
 which she had confided a hundred childish sorrows. The place 
 owed much of its mysterious melancholy to the fact that it was 
 properly entered from the second door of the house, the door 
 that had been condemned, and that was fastened by bolts which 
 a particularly slender little girl found it impossible to slide. She 
 knew that this silent, motionless portal opened into the street ; 
 if the sidelights had not been filled with green paper, she might 
 have looked out upon the little brown stoop and the well-worn 
 brick pavement. But she had no wish to look out, for this 
 
28 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 would have interfered with her theory that there was a strange, 
 unseen place on the other side a place which became, to the 
 child's imagination, according to its different moods, a region of 
 delight or of terror. 
 
 It was in the " office " still that Isabel was sitting on that 
 melancholy afternoon of early spring which I have just 
 mentioned. At this time she might have had the whole house 
 to choose from, and the room she had selected was the most 
 joyless chamber it contained. She had never opened the bolted 
 door nor removed the green paper (renewed by other hands) 
 from its side-lights; she had never assured herself that the 
 vulgar street lay beyond it. A crude, cold rain was falling 
 heavily; the spring-time presented itself as a questionable 
 improvement. Isabel, however, gave as little attention as 
 possible to the incongruities of the season ; she kept her eyes 
 on her book and tried to fix her mind. It had lately occurred 
 to her that her mind was a good deal of a vagabond, and she 
 had spent much ingenuity in training it to a military step, and 
 teaching it to advance, to halt, to retreat, to perform even more 
 complicated manoeuvres, at the word of command. Just now 
 she had given it marching orders, and it had been trudging 
 over the sandy plains of a history of German Thought. 
 Suddenly she became aware of a step very different from her 
 own intellectual pace ; she listened a little, and perceived that 
 some one was walking about the library, which communicated 
 with the office. It struck her first as the step of a person from 
 whom she had reason to expect a visit ; then almost immediately 
 announced itself as the tread of a woman and a stranger her 
 possible visitor being neither. It had an inquisitive, experi- 
 mental quality, which suggested that it would not stop short of 
 the threshold of the office ; and, in 'fact, the doorway of this 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 29 
 
 apartment was presently occupied by a lady who paused there 
 and looked very hard at our heroine. She was a plain, elderly 
 woman, dressed in a comprehensive waterproof mantle : she had 
 a sharp, but not an unpleasant, face. 
 
 " Oh," she said, " is that where you usually sit ? " And she 
 looked about at the heterogeneous chairs and tables. 
 
 " Not when I have visitors," said Isabel, getting up to 
 receive the intruder. 
 
 She directed their course back to the library, and the visitor 
 continued to look about her. "You seem to have plenty of 
 other rooms ; they are in rather better condition. But every- 
 thing is immensely worn." 
 
 " Have you come to look at the house ? " Isabel asked. " The 
 servant will show it to you." 
 
 " Send her away ; I don't want to buy it. She has probably 
 gone to look for you, and is wandering about up-stairs; she 
 didn't seem at all intelligent. You had better tell her it is no 
 matter." And then, while the girl stood there, hesitating and 
 wondering, this unexpected critic said to her abruptly, " I 
 suppose you are one of the daughters 1 " 
 
 Isabel thought she had very strange manners. " It depends 
 upon whose daughters you mean." 
 
 "The late Mr. Archer's and my poor sister's." 
 
 "Ah," said Isabel, slowly, "you must be our crazy Aunt 
 Lydia ! " 
 
 " Is that what your father told you to call me ? I am your 
 Aunt Lydia, but I am not crazy. And which of the daughters 
 are you 1 " 
 
 " I am the youngest of the three, and my name is Isabel." 
 
 " Yes ; the others are Lilian and Edith. And are you the 
 prettiest ? " 
 
30 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " I have not the least idea/' said the girl. 
 
 " I think you must be." And in this way the aunt and the 
 niece made friends. The aunt had quarrelled, years before, with 
 her brother-in-law, after the death of her sister, taking him to 
 task for the manner in which he brought up his three girls. 
 Being a high-tempered man, he had requested her to mind her 
 own business ; and she had taken him at his word. For many 
 years she held no communication with him, and after his death 
 she addressed not a word to his daughters, who had been bred 
 in that disrespectful view of her which we have just seen Isabel 
 betray. Mrs. Touchett's behaviour was, as usual, perfectly 
 deliberate. She intended to go to America to look after her 
 investments (with which her husband, in spite of his great 
 financial position, had nothing to do), and would take advantage 
 of this opportunity to inquire into the condition of her nieces. 
 There was no need of writing, for she should attach no import- 
 ance to any account of them that she should elicit by letter ; 
 she believed, always, in seeing for one's self. Isabel found, 
 however, that she knew a good deal about them, and knew 
 about the marriage of the two elder girls ; knew that their poor 
 father had left very little money, but that the house in Albany, 
 which had passed into his hands, was to be sold for their 
 benefit ; knew, finally, that Edmund Ludlow, Lilian's husband, 
 had taken upon himself to attend to this matter, in consideration 
 of which the young couple, who had come to Albany during 
 Mr. Archer's illness, were remaining there for the present, and, 
 as well as Isabel herself, occupying the mansion. 
 
 " How much money do you expect to get for it 1 " Mrs. 
 Touchett asked of the girl, who had brought her to sit in the 
 front-parlour, which she had inspected without enthusiasm. 
 
 " I haven't the least idea," said the girl. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 81 
 
 " That's the second time you have said that to me," her aunt 
 rejoined. " And yet you don't look at all stupid." 
 
 " I am not stupid : but I don't know anything about money." 
 
 " Yes, that's the way you were brought up as if you were 
 to inherit a million. In point of fact, what have you in- 
 herited 1 " 
 
 " I really can't tell you. You must ask Edmund and Lilian ; 
 they will be back in half-an-hour." 
 
 "In Florence we should call it a very bad house," said Mrs. 
 Touchett ; " but here, I suspect, it will bring a high price. It 
 ought to make a considerable sum for each of you. In addition 
 to that, you must have something else ; it's most extraordinary 
 your not knowing. The position is of value, and they will 
 probably . pull it down and make a row of shops. I wonder 
 you don't do that yourself you might let the shops to great 
 advantage." 
 
 Isabel stared ; the idea of letting shops was new to her. 
 
 " I hope they won't pull it down," she said ; " I am extremely 
 fond of it." 
 
 "I don't see what makes you fond of it; your father died 
 here." 
 
 " Yes ; but I don't dislike it for that," said the girl, rather 
 strangely. " I like places in which things have happened 
 even if they are sad things. A great many people have died 
 here ; the place has been full of life." 
 
 " Is that what you call being full of life ? " 
 
 " I mean full of experience of people's feelings and sorrows. 
 And not of their sorrows only, for I have been very happy here 
 as a child." 
 
 " You should go to Florence if you like houses in which things 
 have happened especially deaths. I live in an old palace in 
 
32 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 which three people have been murdered ; three that were known, 
 and I don't know how many more besides." 
 
 " In an old palace $ " Isabel repeated. 
 
 " Yes, my dear ; a very different affair from this. This is very 
 bourgeois" 
 
 Isabel felt some emotion, for she had always thought highly 
 of her grandmother's house. But the emotion was of a kind 
 which led her to say 
 
 " I should like very much to go to Florence." 
 
 " Well, if you will be very good, and do everything I tell you, 
 I will take you there," Mrs. Touchett rejoined. 
 
 The girl's emotion deepened ; she flushed a little, and smiled 
 at her aunt in silence. 
 
 " Do everything you tell me ? I don't think I can promise 
 that." 
 
 " No, you don't look like a young lady of that sort. You 
 are fond of your own way; but it's not for me to blame 
 you." 
 
 "And yet, to go to Florence," the girl exclaimed in a moment, 
 " I would promise almost anything ! " 
 
 Edmund and Lilian were slow to return, and Mrs. Touchett 
 had an hour's uninterrupted talk with her niece, who found her 
 a strange and interesting person. She was as eccentric as Isabel 
 had always supposed; and hitherto, whenever the girl had heard 
 people described as eccentric, she had thought of them as dis- 
 agreeable. To her imagination the term had always suggested 
 something grotesque and inharmonious. But her aunt infused a 
 new vividness into the idea, and gave her so many fresh impres- 
 sions that it seemed to her she had over-estimated the charms 
 of conformity. She had never met any one so entertaining as 
 this little thin-lipped, bright-eyed, fpreign-looking woman, who 
 
THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 33 
 
 retrieved an insignificant appearance by a distinguished manner, 
 and, sitting there in a well-worn waterproof, talked with striking 
 familiarity of European courts. There was nothing nighty about 
 Mrs. Touchett, but she was fond of social grandeur, and she 
 enjoyed the consciousness of making an impression on a candid 
 and susceptible mind. Isabel at first had answered a good many 
 questions, and it was from her answers apparently that Mrs. 
 Touchett derived a high opinion of her intelligence. But 
 after this she had asked a good many, and her aunt's answers, 
 whatever they were, struck her as deeply interesting. Mrs. 
 Touchett waited for the return of her other niece as long as she 
 thought reasonable, but as at six o'clock Mrs. Ludlow had not 
 come in, she prepared to take her departure. 
 
 " Your sister must be a great gossip," she said. " Is she 
 accustomed to staying out for hours ] " 
 
 " You have been out almost as long as she," Isabel answered; 
 " she can have left the house but a short time before you 
 came in." 
 
 Mrs. Touchett looked at the girl without resentment; she 
 appeared to enjoy a bold retort, and to be disposed to be gracious 
 to her niece. 
 
 " Perhaps she has not had so good an excuse as I. Tell her, 
 at any rate, that she must come and see me this evening at that 
 horrid hotel. She may bring her husband if she likes, but she 
 needn't bring you. I shall see plenty of you later." 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
34 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 IV. 
 
 MRS. LUDLOW was the eldest of the three sisters, and was 
 usually thought the most sensible; the classification being in 
 general that Lilian was the practical one, Edith the beauty, and 
 Isabel the " intellectual " one. Mrs. Keyes, the second sister, 
 was the wife of an officer in the United States Engineers, and as 
 our history is not further concerned with her, it will be enough 
 to say that she was indeed very pretty, and that she formed the 
 ornament of those various military stations, chiefly in the un- 
 fashionable West, to which, to her deep chagrin, her husband 
 was successively relegated. Lilian had married a New York 
 lawyer, a young man with a loud voice and an enthusiasm for 
 his profession; the match was not brilliant, any more than 
 Edith's had been, but Lilian had occasionally been spoken of as 
 a young woman who might be thankful to marry at all she 
 was so much plainer than her sisters. She was, however, very 
 happy, and now, as the mother of two peremptory little boys, 
 and the mistress of a house which presented a narrowness of new 
 brown stone to Fifty-third Street, she had quite justified her 
 claim to matrimony. She was short and plump, and, as people 
 said, had improved since her marriage ; the two things in life 
 of which she was most distinctly conscious were her husband's 
 force in argument and her sister Isabel's originality. " I have 
 
THE PORTBAIT OF A LADY. 35 
 
 never felt like Isabel's sister, and I am sure I never shall," she 
 had said to an intimate friend ; a declaration which made it 
 all the more creditable that she had been prolific in sisterly 
 offices. 
 
 " I want to see her safely married that's what I want to see," 
 she frequently remarked to her husband. 
 
 " Well, I must say I should have no particular desire to marry 
 her," Edmund Ludlow was accustomed to answer, in an extremely 
 audible tone. 
 
 " I know you say that for argument ; you always take the 
 opposite ground. I don't see what you have against her, except 
 that she is so original." 
 
 " Well, I don't like originals ; I like translations," Mr. Ludlow 
 had more than once replied. " Isabel is written in a foreign 
 tongue. I can't make her out. She ought to marry an Armenian, 
 or a Portuguese." 
 
 " That's just what I am afraid she will do ! " cried Lilian, who 
 thought Isabel capable of anything. 
 
 She listened with great interest to the girl's account of Mrs. 
 Touchett's visit, and in the evening prepared to comply with her 
 commands. Of what Isabel said to her no report has remained, 
 but her sister's words must have prompted a remark that she 
 made to her husband in the conjugal chamber as the two were 
 getting ready to go to the hotel. 
 
 " I do hope immensely she will do something handsome for 
 Isabel ; she has evidently taken a great fancy to her." 
 
 " What is it you wish her to do 1 " Edmund Ludlow asked ; 
 " make her a big present 1 " 
 
 " No, indeed ; nothing of the sort. But take an interest in 
 her sympathise with her. She is evidently just the sort of 
 
 person to appreciate Isabel. She has lived so much in foreign 
 
 D 2 
 
36 TEE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 society ; she told Isabel all about it. You know you have 
 always thought Isabel rather foreign." 
 
 "You want her to give her a little foreign sympathy, eh? 
 Don't you think she gets enough at home 1 " 
 
 "Well, she ought to go abroad," said Mrs. Ludlow. " She's 
 just the person to go abroad." 
 
 " And you want the old lady to take her, is that it 1 " her 
 husband asked. 
 
 " She has offered to take her she is dying to have Isabel go ! 
 But what I want her to do when she gets her there is to give her 
 all the advantages. I am sure that all we have got to do," said 
 Mrs. Ludlow, " is to give her a chance ! " 
 " A chance for what 1 " 
 "A chance to develop." 
 
 " Jupiter ! " Edmund Ludlow exclaimed. " I hope she isn't 
 going to develop any more ! " 
 
 " If I were not sure you only said that for argument, I should 
 feel very badly," his wife replied. " But you know you love her." 
 " Do you know I love you ? " the young man said, jocosely, to 
 Isabel a little later, while he brushed his hat. 
 
 " I am sure I don't care whether you do or not ! " exclaimed 
 the girl, whose voice and smile, however, were sweeter than the 
 words she uttered. 
 
 " Oh, she feels so grand since Mrs. Touchett's visit," said 
 her sister. 
 
 But Isabel challenged this ^assertion with a good deal of 
 seriousness. 
 
 " You must not say that, Lily. I don't feel grand at all." 
 " I am sure there is no harm," said the conciliatory Lily. 
 " Ah, but there is nothing in Mrs. Touchett's visit to make 
 one feel grand." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 37 
 
 " Oh," exclaimed Ludlow, " she is grander than ever ! " 
 " Whenever I feel grand," said the girl, " it will be for a better 
 reason." 
 
 Whether she felt grand or no, she at any rate felt busy ; busy, 
 I mean, with her thoughts. Left to herself for the evening, she 
 sat a while under the lamp, with empty hands, heedless of her 
 usual avocations. Then she rose and moved about the room, 
 and from one room to another, preferring the places where the 
 vague lamplight expired. She was restless, and even excited ; 
 at moments she trembled a little. She felt that something had 
 happened to her of which the importance was out of proportion 
 to its appearance ; there had really been a change in her life. 
 What it would bring with it was as yet extremely indefinite ; 
 but Isabel was in a situation which gave a value to any change. 
 She had a desire to leave the past behind her, and, as she said 
 to herself, to begin afresh. This desire, indeed, was not a birth 
 of the present occasion; it was as familiar as the sound of the 
 rain upon the window, and it had led to her beginning afresh a 
 great many times. She closed her eyes as she sat in one of the 
 dusky corners of the quiet parlour ; but it was not with a desire 
 to take a nap. On the contrary, it was because she felt too 
 wide-awake, and wished to check the sense of seeing too many 
 things at once. Her imagination was by habit ridiculously 
 active ; if the door were not opened to it, it jumped out of the 
 window. She was not accustomed, indeed, to keep it behind 
 bolts ; and, at important moments, when she would have been 
 thankful to make use of her judgment alone, she paid the penalty 
 of having given undue encouragement to the faculty of seeing 
 without judging. At present, with her sense that the note of 
 change had been struck, came gradually a host of images of the 
 things she was leaving behind her. The years and hours of her 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 life came back to her, and for a long time, in a stillness broken 
 only by the ticking of the big bronze clock, she passed them in 
 review. It had been a very happy life and she had been a very 
 fortunate girl this was the truth that seemed to emerge most 
 vividly. She had had the best of everything, and in a world 
 in which the circumstances of so many people made them unen- 
 viable, it was an advantage never to have known anything 
 particularly disagreeable. It appeared to Isabel that the disa- 
 greeable had been even too absent from her knowledge, for she 
 had gathered from her acquaintance with literature that it was 
 often a source of interest, and even of instruction. Her father 
 had kept it away from her her handsome, much-loved father, 
 who always had such an aversion to it. It was a great good 
 fortune to have been his daughter ; Isabel was even proud of her 
 parentage. Since his death she had gathered a vague impression 
 that he turned his brighter side to his children, and that he had 
 not eluded discomfort quite so much in practice as in aspiration. 
 But this only made her tenderness for him greater; it was 
 scarcely even painful to have to think that he was too generous, 
 too good-natured, too indifferent to sordid considerations. Many 
 persons thought that he carried this indifference too far ; 
 especially the large* number of those to whom he owed money. 
 Of their opinions, Isabel was never very definitely informed ; 
 but it may interest the reader to know that, while they admitted 
 that the late Mr. Archer had a remarkably handsome head and a 
 very taking manner (indeed, as one of them had said, he was 
 always taking something), they declared that he had made a 
 very poor use of his life. He had squandered a substantial 
 fortune, he had been deplorably convivial, he was known to 
 have gambled freely. A few very harsh critics went so far as to 
 say that he had not even brought up his daughters. They had 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 39 
 
 had no regular education and no permanent home ; they had 
 been at once spoiled and neglected; they had lived with nurse- 
 maids and governesses (usually very bad ones), or had been sent 
 to strange schools kept by foreigners, from which, at the end of 
 a month, they had been removed in tears. This view of the 
 matter would have excited Isabel's indignation, for to her own 
 sense her opportunities had been abundant. Even when her 
 father had left his daughters for three months at Neufchatel 
 with a French bonne, who eloped with a Eussian nobleman, 
 staying at the same hotel even in this irregular situation (an 
 incident of the girl's eleventh year) she had been neither fright- 
 ened nor ashamed, but had thought it a picturesque episode in a 
 liberal education. Her father had a large way of looking at life, 
 of which his restlessness and even his occasional incoherency of 
 conduct had been only a proof. He wished his daughters, even 
 as children, to see as much of the world as possible ; and it was 
 for this purpose that, before Isabel was fourteen, he had trans- 
 ported them three times across the Atlantic, giving them on each 
 occasion, however, but a few months' view of foreign lands ; a 
 course which had whetted our heroine's curiosity without 
 enabling her to satisfy it. She ought to have been a partisan 
 of her father, for among his three daughters she was quite his 
 favourite, and in his last days his general willingness to take 
 leave of a world in which the difficulty of doing as one liked 
 appeared to increase as one grew older was sensibly modified by 
 the pain of separation from his clever, his superior, his remark- 
 able girl. Later, when the journeys to Europe ceased, he still 
 had shown his children all sorts of indulgence, and if he had 
 been troubled about money-matters, nothing ever disturbed their 
 irrenective consciousness of many possessions. Isabel, though 
 she danced very well, had not the recollection of having been in 
 
40 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 New York a successful member of the choregraphic circle ; her 
 sister Edith was, as every one said, so very much more popular. 
 Edith was so striking an example of success that Isabel could 
 have no illusions as to what constituted this advantage, or as to 
 the moderate- character of her own triumphs. Nineteen persons 
 out of twenty (including the younger sister herself) pronounced 
 Edith infinitely the prettier of the two ; but the twentieth, 
 besides reversing this judgment, had the entertainment of thinking 
 all the others a parcel of fools. Isabel had in the depths of 
 her nature an even more unquenchable desire to please than 
 Edith ; but the depths of this young lady's nature were a very 
 out-of-the-way place, between which and the surface communi- 
 cation was interrupted by a dozen capricious forces. She saw 
 the young men who came in large numbers to see her sister ; 
 but as a general thing they were afraid of her; they had a 
 belief that some special preparation was required for talking 
 with her. Her reputation of reading a great deal hung about 
 her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic ; it was 
 supposed to engender difficult questions, and to keep the conver- 
 sation at a low temperature. The poor girl liked to be thought 
 clever, but she hated to be thought bookish ; she used to read in 
 secret, and, though jier memory was excellent, to abstain from 
 quotation. She had a great desire for knowledge, but she really 
 preferred almost any source of information to the printed page ; 
 she had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly 
 staring and wondering. She carried within herself a great fund 
 of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity 
 between the movements of her own heart and the agitations of 
 the world. For this reason she was fond of seeing great crowds 
 and large stretches of country, of reading about revolutions and 
 wars, of looking at historical pictures u class of efforts to which 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 41 
 
 she had often gone so far as to forgive much bad painting for 
 the sake of the subject. While the Civil War went on, she was 
 still a very young girl ; but she passed months of this long 
 period in a state of almost passionate excitement, in which she 
 felt herself at times (to her extreme confusion) stirred almost 
 indiscriminately by the valour of either army. Of course 
 the circumspection of the local youth had never gone the 
 length of making her a social proscript; for the proportion of 
 those whose hearts, as they approached her, beat only just fast 
 enough to make it a sensible pleasure, was sufficient to redeem 
 her maidenly career from failure. She had had everything that 
 a girl could have : kindness, admiration, flattery, bouquets, the 
 sense of exclusion from none of the privileges of the world she 
 lived in, abundant opportunity for dancing, the latest publica- 
 tions, plenty of new dresses, the London Spectator, and a glimpse 
 of contemporary sesthetics. 
 
 These things now, as memory played over them, resolved 
 themselves into a multitude of scenes and figures. Forgotten 
 things came back to her ; many others, which she had lately 
 thought of great moment, dropped out of sight. The result was 
 kaleidoscopic ; but the movement of the instrument was checked 
 at last by the servant's coming in with the name of a gentleman. 
 The name of the gentleman was Caspar Goodwood ; he was a 
 straight young man from Boston, who had known Miss Archer for 
 the last twelvemonth, and who, thinking her the most beautiful 
 young woman of her time, had pronounced the time, according to 
 the rule I have hinted at, a foolish period of history. He sometimes 
 wrote to Isabel, and he had lately written to her from New York. 
 She had thought it very possible he would come in had, indeed, 
 all the rainy day been vaguely expecting him. Nevertheless, now 
 that she learned he was there, she felt no eagerness to receive 
 
42 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 him. He was the finest young man she had ever seen, was, 
 indeed, quite a magnificent young man ; he filled her with a 
 certain feeling of respect which she had never entertained for 
 any one else. He was supposed by the world in general to wish 
 to marry her ; but this of course was between themselves. It 
 at least may be affirmed that he had travelled from New York 
 to Albany expressly to see her; having learned in the former 
 city, where he was spending a few days and where he had hoped 
 to find her, that she was still at the capital. Isabel delayed for 
 some minutes to go to him ; she moved about the room with a 
 certain feeling of embarrassment. But at last she presented 
 herself, and found him standing near the lamp. He was tall, 
 strong, and somewhat stiff ; he was also lean and brown. He 
 was not especially good-looking, but his physiognomy had an air 
 of requesting your attention, which it rewarded or not, according 
 to the charm you found in a blue eye of remarkable fixedness 
 and a jaw of the somewhat angular mould, which is supposed 
 to bespeak resolution. Isabel said to herself that it bespoke 
 resolution to-night ; but, nevertheless, an hour later, Caspar 
 Goodwood, who had arrived hopeful as well as resolute, took his 
 way back to his lodging with the feeling of a man defeated. 
 He was not, however, a man to be discouraged by a defeat. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 43 
 
 Y. 
 
 EALPH TOUCHETT was a philosopher, but nevertheless he 
 knocked at his mother's door (at a quarter to seven) with a good 
 deal of eagerness. Even philosophers have their preferences, 
 and it must be admitted that of his progenitors his father 
 ministered most to his sense of the sweetness of filial depend- 
 ence. His father, as he had often said to himself, was the more 
 motherly; his mother, on the other hand, was paternal, and 
 even, according to the slang of the day, gubernatorial. She 
 was nevertheless very fond of her only child, and had always 
 insisted on his spending three months of the year with her. 
 Ealph rendered perfect justice to her affection, and knew that in 
 her thoughts his turn always came after the care of her house 
 and her conservatory (she was extremely fond of flowers). He 
 found her completely dressed for dinner, but she embraced her 
 boy with her gloved hands, and made him sit on the sofa beside 
 her. She inquired scrupulously about her husband's health and 
 about the young man's own, and receiving no very brilliant 
 account of either, she remarked that she was more than ever 
 convinced of her wisdom in not exposing herself to the English 
 climate. In this case she also might have broken down. Ealph 
 smiled at the idea of his mother breaking down, but made no 
 point of reminding her that his own enfeebled condition was 
 
44 THE PORTRAIT OF -A LADY. 
 
 not the result of the English climate, from which he absented 
 himself for a considerable part of each year. 
 
 He had been a very small boy when his father, Daniel Tracy 
 Touch ett, who was a native of Rutland, in the State of Vermont, 
 came to England as subordinate partner in a banking-house, in 
 which some ten years later he acquired a preponderant interest. 
 Daniel Touchett saw before him a life-long residence in his 
 adopted country, of which, from the first, he took a simple, 
 cheerful, and eminently practical VICAV. But, as he said to him- 
 self, he had no intention of turning Englishman, nor had he any 
 desire to convert his only son to the same sturdy faith. It had 
 been for himself so very soluble a problem to live in England, 
 and yet not be of it, that it seemed to him equally simple that 
 after his death his lawful heir should carry on the bank in a 
 pure American spirit. He took pains to cultivate this spirit, 
 however, by sending the boy home for his education. Ealph 
 spent several terms in an American school, and took a degree 
 at an American college, after which, as he struck his father on 
 his return as even redundantly national, he was placed for 
 some three years in residence at Oxford. Oxford swallowed 
 up Harvard, and Ralph became at last English enough. His 
 outward conformit}* to the manners that surrounded him was 
 none the less the mask of a mind that greatly enjoyed its 
 independence, on which nothing long imposed itself, and which, 
 naturally inclined to jocosity and irony, indulged in a boundless 
 liberty of appreciation. He began with being a young man of 
 promise ; at Oxford he distinguished himself, to his father's 
 ineffable satisfaction, and the people about him said it was a 
 thousand pities so clever a fellow should be shut out from a 
 career. He might have had a career by returning to his own 
 country (though this point is shrouded' in uncertainty), and even 
 
THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 45 
 
 if Mr. Toucliett had been willing to part with him (which was 
 
 not the case), it would have gone hard with him to put the ocean 
 
 (which he detested) permanently between himself and the old 
 
 man whom he regarded as his best friend. Ralph was not only 
 
 fond of his father, but he admired him he enjoyed the opportunity 
 
 of observing him. Daniel Touchett to his perception was a man 
 
 of genius, and though he himself had no great fancy for the 
 
 banking business, he made a point of learning enough of it to 
 
 measure the great figure his father had played. It was not this, 
 
 however, he mainly relished, it was the old man's effective 
 
 simplicity. Daniel Touchett had been neither at Harvard nor 
 
 at Oxford, and it was his own fault if he had put into his son's 
 
 hands the key to modern criticism. Ralph, whose head was 
 
 full of ideas which his father had never guessed, had a high 
 
 esteem for the latter's originality. Americans, rightly or wrongly, 
 
 are commended for the ease with which they adopt themselves 
 
 to foreign conditions ; but Mr. Touchett had given evidence of 
 
 this talent only up to a certain point. He had made himself 
 
 thoroughly comfortable in England, but he had never attempted 
 
 to pitch his thoughts in the English key. He had retained 
 
 many characteristics of Rutland, Vermont ; his tone, as his son 
 
 always noted with pleasure, was that of the more luxuriant parts 
 
 of New England. At the end of his life, especially, he was a 
 
 gentle, refined, fastidious old man, who combined consummate 
 
 shrewdness with a sort of fraternising good -humour, and whose 
 
 feeling about his own position in the world was quite of the 
 
 democratic sort. It was perhaps his want of imagination and of 
 
 what is called the historic consciousness ; but to many of the 
 
 impressions usually made by English life upon the cultivated 
 
 stranger his sense was completely closed. There were certain 
 
 differences he never perceived, certain habits he never formed, 
 
46 THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 certain mysteries he never understood. As regards these latter, 
 on the day that he had understood them his son would have 
 thought less well of him. 
 
 Ralph, on leaving Oxford, spent a couple of years in travelling ; 
 after which he found himself mounted on a high stool in his 
 father's bank. The responsibility and honour of such positions 
 is not, I believe, measured by the height of the stool, which 
 depends upon other considerations; Ralph, indeed, who had 
 very long legs, was fond of standing, and even of walking about, 
 at his work. To this exercise, however, he was obliged to devote 
 but a limited period, for at the end of some eighteen months he 
 became conscious that he was seriously out of health. He had 
 caught a violent cold, which fixed itself upon his lungs and 
 threw them into extreme embarrassment. He had to give 
 up work and embrace the sorry occupation known as taking 
 care of one's self. At first he was greatly disgusted; it ap- 
 peared to him that it was not himself in the least that he was 
 taking care of, but an uninteresting and uninterested person with 
 whom he had nothing in common. This person, however, 
 improved on acquaintance, and Ralph grew at last to have a 
 certain grudging tolerance, and even undemonstrative respect, for 
 him. Misfortune makes strange bed-fellows, and our young 
 man, feeling that he had something at stake in the matter it 
 usually seemed to him to be his reputation for common sense 
 devoted to his unattractive protege an amount of attention of 
 which note was duly taken, and which had at least the effect of 
 keeping the poor fellow alive. One of his lungs began to heal, 
 the other promised to follow its example, and he was assured 
 that he might out weather a dozen winters if he would betake 
 himself to one of those climates in which consumptives chiefly 
 congregate. He had grown extremely fond of London, and 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 47 
 
 cursed this immitigable necessity ; but at the same time that he 
 cursed, he conformed, and gradually, when he found that his 
 sensitive organ was really grateful for such grim favours, he 
 conferred them with a better grace. He wintered abroad, as 
 the phrase is ; basked in the sun, stopped at home when the 
 wind blew, went to bed when it rained, and once or twice, when 
 it snowed, almost never got up again. A certain fund of indo- 
 lence that he possessed came to his aid and helped to reconcile 
 him to doing nothing ; for at the best he was too ill for anything 
 but a passive life. As he said to himself, there was really nothing 
 he had wanted very much to do, so that he had given up 
 nothing. At present, however, the perfume of forbidden fruit 
 seemed occasionally to float past him, to remind him that the 
 finest pleasures of life are to be found in the world of action. 
 Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor 
 translation a meagre entertainment for a young man who felt 
 that he might have been an excellent linguist. He had good 
 winters and poor winters, and while the former lasted he was 
 sometimes the sport of a vision of virtual recovery. But this 
 vision was dispelled some three years before the occurrence of the 
 incidents with which this history opens ; he had on this occasion 
 remained later than usual in England, and had been overtaken 
 by bad weather before reaching Algiers. He reached it more 
 dead than alive, and lay there for several W3eks between life and 
 death. His cgnvalescence was a miracle, but the first use he 
 made of it was to assure himself that such miracles happen but 
 once. He said to himself that his hour was in sight, and that it 
 behoved him to keep his eyes upon it, but that it was also open 
 to him to spend the interval as agreeably as might be consistent 
 with such a preoccupation. With the prospect of losing them, 
 the simple use of his faculties became an exquisite pleasure ; it 
 
48 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 seemed to him that the delights of observation had never been 
 suspected. He was far from the time when he had found it hard 
 that he should be obliged to give up the idea of distinguishing 
 himself ; an idea none the less importunate for being vague, and 
 none the less delightful for having to struggle with a good deal 
 of native indifference. His friends at present found him 
 much more cheerful, and attributed it to a theory, over which 
 they shook their heads knowingly, that he would recover 
 his health. The truth was that he had simply accepted the 
 situation. 
 
 It was very probable this sweet-tasting property of observation 
 to which I allude (for he found himself in these last years much 
 more inclined to notice the pleasant things of the world than the 
 others) that was mainly concerned in Ealph's quickly-stirred 
 interest in the arrival of a young lady who was evidently not 
 insipid. If he were observantly disposed, something told him, 
 here was occupation enough for a succession of days. It may be 
 added, somewhat crudely, that the liberty of falling in love had 
 a place in Ralph Touchett's programme. This was of course a 
 liberty to be very temperately used ; for though the safest form 
 of any sentiment is that which is conditioned upon silence, it is 
 not always the most comfortable, and Ralph had forbidden him- 
 self the arts of demonstration. But conscious observation of a 
 lovely woman had struck him as the finest entertainment that 
 the world now had to offer him, and if the interest should 
 become poignant, he flattered himself that he could carry it off 
 quietly, as he had carried other discomforts. He speedily 
 acquired a conviction, however, that he was not destined to fall 
 in love with his cousin. 
 
 " And now tell me about the young lady," he said to his 
 mother. " What do you mean to do ,with her ? " 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 49 
 
 Mrs. Touchett hesitated a little. " I mean to ask your father 
 to invite her to stay three or four weeks at Gardencourt." 
 
 " You needn't stand on any such ceremony as that," said 
 Ralph. " My father will ask her as a matter of course." 
 
 " I don't know about that. She is my niece ; she is not his." 
 
 " Good Lord, dear mother ; what a sense of property ! That's 
 all the more reason for his asking her. But after that I mean 
 after three months (for it's absurd asking the poor girl to remain 
 but for three or four paltry weeks) what do you mean to do 
 with her 1 " 
 
 " I mean to take her to Paris, to get her some clothes." 
 
 " Ah yes, that's of course. But independently of that? " 
 
 " I shall invite her to spend the autumn with me in Florence." 
 
 " You don't rise above detail, dear mother," said Ralph. " I 
 should like to know what you mean to do with her in a general 
 way." 
 
 " My duty ! " Mrs. Touchett declared. " I suppose you pity 
 her very much," she added. 
 
 " No, I don't think I pity her. She doesn't strike me as a 
 girl that suggests compassion. I think I envy her. Before being 
 sure, however, give me a hint of what your duty will direct you 
 to do." 
 
 " It will direct mo to show her four European countries I 
 shall leave her the choice of two of them and to give her the 
 opportunity of perfecting herself in French, which she already 
 knows very well." 
 
 Ralph frowned a little. " That sounds rather dry even 
 giving her the choice of two of the countries." 
 
 " If it's dry," said his mother with a laugh, " you can leave 
 Isabel alone to water it ! She is as good as a summer rain, any day." 
 
 " Do you mean that she is a gifted being 1 " 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
50 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " I don't know whether she is a gifted being, but she is a clever 
 girl, with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of 
 being bored." 
 
 " I can imagine that," said Ealph ; and then he added, 
 abruptly, " How do you two get on 1 " 
 
 " Do you mean by that that I am a bore 1 I don't think 
 Isabel finds me one. Some girls might, I know; but this one is 
 too clever for that. I think I amuse her a good deal. We get 
 on very well, because I understand her ; I know the sort of girl 
 she is. She is very frank, and I am very frank ; we know just 
 what to expect of each other." 
 
 " Ah, dear mother," Ralph exclaimed, "one always knows 
 what to expect of you ! You have never surprised me but once, 
 and that is to-day in presenting me with a pretty cousin whose 
 existence I had never suspected." 
 
 " Do you think her very pretty ? " 
 
 " Very pretty indeed ; but I don't insist upon that. It's her 
 general air of being some one in particular that strikes me. Who 
 is this rare creature, and what is she? Where did you find 
 her, and how did you make her acquaintance ? " 
 
 " I found her in an old house at Albany, sitting in a dreary 
 room on a rainy day, reading a heavy book, and boring herself to 
 death. She didn't know she was bored, but when I told her, 
 she seemed very grateful for the hint. You may say I shouldn't 
 have told her I should have let her alone. There is a good 
 deal in that ; but I acted conscientiously ; I thought she was 
 meant for something better. It occurred to me that it would be 
 a kindness to take her about and introduce her to the world. 
 She thinks she knows a great deal of it like most American 
 girls; but like most American girls she is very much mistaken. 
 If you want to know, I thought she 'would do me credit. I like 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 51 
 
 to be well thought of, and for a woman of my age there is no 
 more "becoming ornament than an attractive niece. You know 
 I had seen nothing of my sister's children for years ; I disap- 
 proved entirely of the father. But I always meant to do some- 
 thing for them when he should have gone to his reward. I 
 ascertained where they were to be found, and, without any 
 preliminaries, went and introduced myself. There are two other 
 sisters, both of whom are married; but I saw only the elder, 
 who has, by the way, a very uncivil husband. The wife, whose 
 name is Lily, jumped at the idea of my taking an interest 
 in Isabel ; she said it was just what her sister needed that 
 some one should take an interest in her. She spoke of her as 
 you might speak of some young person of genius, in want of 
 encouragement and patronage. It may be that Isabel is a genius ; 
 but in that case I have not yet learned her special line. Mrs. 
 Ludlow was especially keen about my taking her to Europe ; they 
 all regard Europe over there as a sort of land of emigration, a 
 refuge for their superfluous population. Isabel herself seemed 
 very glad to come, and the thing was easily arranged. There 
 was a little difficulty about the money-question, as she seemed 
 averse to being under pecuniary obligations. But she has a 
 small income, and she supposes herself to be travelling at her 
 own expense." 
 
 Ralph had listened attentively to this judicious account of his 
 pretty cousin, by which his interest in her was not impaired. 
 " Ah, if she is a genius," he said, " we must find out her special 
 line. Is it, by chance, for flirting ] " 
 
 " I don't think so. You may suspect that at first, but you 
 will be wrong." 
 
 " Warburton is wrong, then ! " Ralph Touchett exclaimed. 
 
 " He flatters himself he has made that discovery." 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 His mother shook her head. " Lord Warburton won't under- 
 stand her j he needn't try." 
 
 " He is very intelligent," said Ralph ; " but it's right he should 
 be puzzled once in a while." 
 
 " Isabel will enjoy puzzling a lord," Mrs. Touchett remarked. 
 
 Her son frowned a little. " What does she know about 
 lords 1 " 
 
 " Nothing at all ; that will puzzle him all the more." 
 
 Ralph greeted these words with a laugh, and looked out of the 
 window a little. Then " Are you not going down to see my 
 lather 1 " he asked. 
 
 " At a quarter to eight," said Mrs. Touchett. 
 
 Her son looked at his watch. " You have another quarter of 
 an hour, then ; tell me some more about Isabel." 
 
 But Mrs. Touchett declined his invitation, declaring that he 
 must find out for himself. 
 
 " Well," said Ralph, " she will certainly do you credit. But 
 won't she also give you trouble 1 " 
 
 "I hope not ; but if she does, I shall not shrink from it. I 
 never do that." 
 
 " She strikes me as very natural," said Ralph. 
 " Natural people are not the most trouble." 
 
 " No," said Ralph ; " you yourself are a proof of that. You 
 are extremely natural, and I am sure you have never troubled 
 any one. But tell me this ; it just occurs to me. Is Isabel 
 capable of making herself disagreeable 1 " 
 
 " Ah," cried his mother, " you ask too many questions ! Find 
 that out for yourself." 
 
 His questions, however, were not exhausted. "All this time," 
 he said, " you have not told me what you intend to do with 
 her." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 53 
 
 " Do with her ? You talk as if she were a yard of calico. I 
 shall do absolutely nothing with her, and she herself will do 
 everything that she chooses. She gave me notice of that." 
 
 "What you meant then, in your telegram, was that her 
 character was independent." 
 
 " I never know what I mean by my telegrams especially 
 those I send from America. Clearness is too expensive. Come 
 down to your father." 
 
 " It is not yet a quarter to eight," said Ealph. 
 
 " I must allow for his impatience," Mrs. Touchett answered. 
 
 Ealph knew what to think of his father's impatience ; but 
 making no rejoinder, he offered his mother his arm. This put 
 it into his power, as they descended together, to stop her a 
 moment on the middle landing of the staircase the broad, low, 
 wide-armed staircase of time-stained oak which was one of the 
 most striking ornaments of Gardencourt. 
 
 " You have no plan of marrying her 1 " he said, smiling, 
 
 " Marry her ? I should be sorry to play her such a trick ! 
 But apart from that, she is perfectly able to marry herself ; she 
 has every facility." 
 
 " Do you mean to say she has a husband picked out 1 " 
 
 " I don't know about a husband, but there is a young man in 
 Boston " 
 
 Ealph went on; he had no desire to hear about the young 
 man in Boston. " As my father says," he exclaimed, " they a're 
 always engaged ! " 
 
 His mother had told him that he must extract his information 
 about his cousin from the girl herself, and it soon became evident 
 to him that he should not want for opportunity. He had, for 
 instance, a good deal of talk with her that same evening, when 
 the two had been left alone together in the drawing-room. Lord 
 
54 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 Warburton, who had ridden over from his own house, some ten 
 miles distant, remounted and took his departure before dinner ; 
 and an hour after this meal was concluded, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Touchett, who appeared to have exhausted each other's convers- 
 ation, withdrew, under the valid pretext of fatigue, to their 
 respective apartments. The young man spent an hour with 
 his cousin ; though she had been travelling half the day she 
 appeared to have no sense of weariness. She was really tired ; 
 she knew it, and knew that she should pay for it on the morrow ; 
 but it was her habit at this period to carry fatigue to the furthest 
 point, and confess to it only when dissimulation had become 
 impossible. For the present it was perfectly possible ; she was 
 interested and excited. She asked Ralph to show her the 
 pictures ; there were a great many of them in the house, most of 
 them of his own choosing. The best of them were arranged in 
 an oaken gallery of charming proportions, which had a sitting- 
 room at either end of it, and which in the evening was usually 
 lighted. The light was insufficient to show the pictures to 
 advantage, and the visit might have been deferred till the 
 morrow. This suggestion Ralph had ventured to make ; but 
 Isabel looked disappointed smiling still, however arid said, 
 " If you please, I ^hould like to see them just a little." She 
 was eager, she knew that she was eager and that she seemed so ; 
 but she could not help it. " She doesn't take suggestions," Ralph 
 said to himself ; but he said it without irritation ; her eagerness 
 amused and even pleased him. The lamps were on brackets, at 
 intervals, and if the light was imperfect it was genial. It fell 
 upon the vague squares of rich colour and on the faded gilding 
 of heavy frames ; it made a shining on the polished floor of the 
 gallery. Ralph took a candlestick and moved about, pointing 
 out the things he liked; Isabel, bendirig toward one picture after 
 
THE PORTKAIT OF A LADY. 55 
 
 another, indulged in little exclamations and murmurs. She was 
 evidently a judge ; she had a natural taste ; he was struck with 
 that. She took a candlestick herself and held it slowly here 
 and there; she lifted it high, and as she did so, he found 
 himself pausing in the middle of the gallery and bending his 
 eyes much less upon the pictures than on her figure. He lost 
 nothing, in truth, by these wandering glances ; for she was better 
 worth looking at than most works of art. She was thin, and 
 light, and middling tall; when people had wished to distin- 
 guish her from the other two Miss Archers, they always called 
 her the thin one. Her hair, which was dark even to blackness, 
 had been an object of envy to many women ; her light grey eye, 
 a little too keen perhaps in her graver moments, had an enchant- 
 ing softness when she smiled. They walked slowly up one side 
 of the gallery and down the other, and then she said 
 
 " Well, nuw I know more than I did when I began ! " 
 
 "You apparently have a great passion for knowledge," her 
 cousin answered, laughing. 
 
 " I think I have ; most girls seem to me so ignorant," said 
 Isabel. 
 
 " You strike me as different from most girls." 
 
 " Ah, some girls are so nice," murmured Isabel, who preferred 
 not to talk about herself. Then, in a moment, to change the 
 subject, she went on, " Please tell me isn't there a ghost 'I " 
 
 "A ghost ?" 
 
 " A spectre, a phantom ; we call them ghosts in America." 
 
 " So we do here, when we see them." 
 
 " You do see them, then 1 You ought to, in this romantic 
 old house." 
 
 " It's not a romantic house," said Ralph. " You will be 
 disappointed if you count on that. It's dismally prosaic ; there 
 
56 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 is no romance here but what you may have brought with 
 you." 
 
 " I have brought a great deal ; but it seems to me I have 
 brought it to the right place." 
 
 " To keep it out of harm, certainly ; nothing will ever happen 
 to it here, between my father and me." 
 
 Isabel looked at him a moment. 
 
 " Is there never any one here but your father and you 1 " 
 
 " My mother, of course." 
 
 " Oh, I know your mother ; she is not romantic. Haven't 
 you other people 1 " 
 
 " Very few." 
 
 " I am sorry for that ; I like so much to see people." 
 
 " Oh, we will invite all the county to amuse you," said 
 Ealph. 
 
 " Now you are making fun of me," the girl answered, rather 
 gravely. " Who was the gentleman that was on the lawn when 
 I arrived 1 " 
 
 " A county neighbour ; he doesn't come very often." 
 
 " I am sorry for that ; I liked him," said Isabel. 
 
 " Why, it seemed to me that you barely spoke to him," Ralph 
 objected. , 
 
 " Never mind, I like him all the same/ I like your father, 
 too, immensely." 
 
 " You can't do better than that ; he is a dear old man." 
 
 " I am so sorry he is ill," said Isabel. 
 
 " You must help me to nurse him ; you ought to be a good 
 nurse." 
 
 " I don't think I am ; I have been told I am not ; I am said 
 to be too theoretic. But you haven't told me about the ghost," 
 she added. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 57 
 
 Ralph, however, gave no heed to this observation. 
 
 " You like my father, and you like Lord Warburton. I 
 infer also that you like my mother." 
 
 " I like your mother very much, because because " 
 
 And Isabel found herself attempting to assign a reason for her 
 affection for Mrs. Touchett. 
 
 " Ah, we never know why ! " said her companion, laughing. 
 
 " I always know why," the girl answered. " It's because she 
 doesn't expect one to like her ; she doesn't care whether one 
 does or not." 
 
 " So you adore her, out of perversity 1 Well, I take greatly 
 after my mother," said Ealph. 
 
 " I don't believe you do at all. You wish people to like you, 
 and you try to make them do it." 
 
 " Good heavens, how you see through one ! " cried Ealph, 
 with a dismay that was not altogether jocular. 
 
 " But I like you all the same," his cousin went on. 
 " The way to clinch the matter will be to show me the 
 ghost." 
 
 Ealph shook his head sadly. " I might show it to you, but 
 you would never see it. The privilege isn't given to every one ; 
 it's not enviable. It has never been seen by a young, happy, 
 innocent person like you. You must have suffered first, have 
 suffered greatly, have gained some miserable knowledge. In 
 that way your eyes are opened to it. I saw it long ago," said 
 Ealph, smiling. 
 
 " I told you just now I was very fond of knowledge," the 
 girl answered. 
 
 " Yes, of happy knowledge of pleasant knowledge. But 
 you haven't suffered, and you are not made to suffer. I hope 
 you will never see the ghost ! " 
 
53 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 Isabel had listened to him attentively, with a smile on her 
 lips, but with a certain gravity in her eyes. Charming as he 
 found her, she had struck him as rather presumptuous indeed 
 it was a part of her charm ; and he wondered what she would 
 say. 
 
 " I am not afraid," she said ; which seemed quite presumptuous 
 enough. 
 
 " You are not afraid of suffering 1 " 
 
 " Yes, I am afraid of suffering. But I am not afraid of ghosts. 
 And I think people suffer too easily," she added. 
 
 " I don't believe you do," said Ralph, looking at her with his 
 hands in his pockets. 
 
 "I don't think that's a fault," she answered. "It is not 
 absolutely necessary to suffer ; we were not made for that." 
 
 " You were not, certainly." 
 
 " I am not speaking of myself." And she turned away a 
 little. 
 
 " No, it isn't a fault," said her cousin. " It's a merit to be 
 strong." 
 
 " Only, if you don't suffer, they call you hard," Isabel re- 
 marked. They passed out of the smaller drawing-room, into 
 which they had returned from the gallery, and paused in the 
 hall, at the foot of the staircase. Here Ealph presented his 
 companion with her bed-room* candle, which he had taken from 
 a niche. " Never mind what they call you," he said. " When 
 you do suffer, they call you an idiot. The great point is to be 
 as happy as possible." 
 
 She looked at him a little ; she had taken her 'candle, and 
 placed her foot on the oaken stair. " Well," she said, " that's 
 what I came to Europe for, to be as happy as possible: Good 
 night." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 59 
 
 " Good night ! I wish you all success, and shall be very glad 
 to contribute to it ! " 
 
 She turned away, and he watched her, as she slowly ascended. 
 Then, with his hands always in his pockets, he went back to the 
 
60 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 VI. 
 
 ISABEL ARCHER was a young person of many theories ; her 
 imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to 
 possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her 
 lot was cast ; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts, 
 and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar. 
 It is true that among her contemporaries she passed for a young 
 woman of extraordinary profundity ; for these excellent people 
 never withheld their admiration from a reach of intellect of 
 which they themselves were not conscious, and spoke of Isabel 
 as a prodigy of learning, a young lady reputed to have read the 
 classic authors in translations. Her paternal aunt, Mrs. Yarian, 
 once spread the rumour that Isabel was writing a book Mrs. 
 Varian having a reverence for books and averred that Isabel 
 would distinguish herself in print. Mrs. Yarian thought highly 
 of literature, for which she entertained that esteem that is con- 
 nected with a sense of privation. Her own large house, remark- 
 able for its assortment of mosaic tables and decorated ceilings, 
 was unfurnished with a library, and in the way of printed 
 volumes contained nothing but half-a-dozen novels in paper, on 
 a shelf in the apartment of one of the Miss Yarians. Practically, 
 Mrs. Yarian's acquaintance with literature was confined to the 
 New York Interviewer ; as she very justly said, after you had read 
 the Interviewer, you had no time for anything else. Her tendency, 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 61 
 
 however, was rather to keep the Interviewer out of the way of 
 her daughters ; she was determined to bring them up seriously, 
 and they read nothing at all. Her impression with regard to 
 Isabel's labours was quite illusory; the girl never attempted 
 to write a book, and had no desire to be an authoress. She had 
 no talent for expression, and had none of the consciousness of 
 genius ; she only had a general idea that people were right when 
 they treated her as if she were rather superior. Whether or no 
 she were superior, people were right in admiring her if they 
 thought her so ; for it seemed to her often that her mind moved 
 more quickly than theirs, and this encouraged an impatience that 
 might easily be confounded with superiority. It may be affirmed 
 without delay that Isabel was probably very liable to the sin of 
 self-esteem ; she often surveyed with complacency the field of 
 her own nature ; she was in the habit of taking for granted, 
 on scanty evidence, that she was right ; impulsively, she often 
 admired herself. Meanwhile her errors and delusions were fre- 
 quently such as a biographer interested in preserving the dignity 
 of his heroine must shrink from specifying. Her thoughts 
 were a tangle of vague outlines, which had never been cor- 
 rected by the judgment of people who seemed to her to speak 
 with authority. In matters of opinion she had had her own 
 way, and it had led her into a thousand ridiculous zigzags. 
 Every now and then she found out she was wrong, and then 
 she treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After 
 this she held her head higher than ever again ; for it was of no 
 use, she had an unquenchable desire to think well of herself. 
 She had a theory that it was only on this condition that life was 
 worth living ; that one should be one of the best, should be con- 
 scious of a fine organisation (she could not help knowing her 
 organisation was fine), should move in a realm of light, of natural 
 
62 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic. It 
 was almost as unnecessary to cultivate doubt of oneself as to 
 cultivate doubt of one's best friend; one should try to be one's 
 own best friend, and to give oneself, in this manner, distinguished 
 company. The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination which 
 rendered her a good many services and played her a great many 
 tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty, and 
 bravery, and magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to 
 regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of 
 irresistible action; she thought it would be detestable to be 
 afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she should 
 never do anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after 
 discovering them, her mere errors of feeling (the discovery always 
 made her tremble, as if she had escaped from a trap which might 
 have caught her and smothered her), that the chance of inflict- 
 ing a sensible injury upon another person, presented only as a 
 contingency, caused her at moments to hold her breath. That 
 always seemed to her the worst thing that could happen to one. 
 On the whole, reflectively, she was in no uncertainty about the 
 things that were wrong. She had no taste for thinking of them, 
 but whenever she looked at them fixedly she recognised them. 
 It was wrong to bemean, to be jealous, to be false, to be cruel ; 
 she had seen very little of the evil of the world, but she had 
 seen women who lied and who tried to hurt each other. Seeing 
 such things had quickened her high spirit ; it seemed right to 
 scorn them. Of course the danger of a high spirit is the danger 
 of inconsistency the danger of keeping up the flag after the 
 place has surrendered ; a sort of behaviour so anomalous as to be 
 almost a dishonour to the flag. But Isabel, who knew little of 
 the sorts of artillery to which young ladies are exposed, flattered 
 herself that such contradictions would never be observed in her 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 63 
 
 own conduct. Her life should always be in harmony with the 
 most pleasing impression she should produce; she would be what 
 she appeared, and she would appear what she was. Sometimes 
 she went so far as to wish that she should find herself some 
 day in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure 
 of being as heroic as the occasion demanded. Altogether, with 
 her meagre knowledge, her inflated ideals, her confidence at once 
 innocent and dogmatic, her temper at once exacting and indulg- 
 ent, her mixture of curiosity and fastidiousness, of vivacity and 
 indifference, her desire to look very well and to be if possible 
 even better ; her determination to see, to try, to know ; her 
 combination of the delicate, desultory, flame-like spirit and the 
 eager and personal young girl ; she would be an easy victim of 
 scientific criticism, if she were not intended to awaken on the 
 reader's part an impulse more tender and more purely expectant. 
 It was one of her theories that Isabel Archer was very fortun- 
 ate in being independent, and that she ought to make some very 
 enlightened use of her independence. She never called it lone- 
 liness ; she thought that weak ; and besides, her sister Lily con- 
 stantly urged her to come and stay with her. She had a friend 
 whose acquaintance she had made shortly before her father's 
 death, who offered so laudable an example of useful activity that 
 Isabel always thought of her as a model. Henrietta Stackpole 
 had the advantage of a remarkable talent; she was thoroughly 
 launched in journalism, and her letters to the Interviewer, from 
 Washington, Newport, the White Mountains, and other places, 
 were universally admired. Isabel did not accept them unrestrict- 
 edly, but she esteemed the courage, energy, and good-humour of 
 her friend, who, without parents and without property, had 
 adopted three of the children of an infirm and widowed sister, 
 and was paying their school-bills out of the proceeds of her 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 literary labour. Henrietta was a great radical, and had clear-cut 
 views on most subjects; her cherished desire had long been to 
 come to Europe and write a series of letters to the Interviewer 
 from the radical point of view an enterprise the less difficult as 
 she knew perfectly in advance what her opinions would be, and 
 to how many objections most European institutions lay open. 
 When she heard that Isabel was coming, she wished to start at 
 once ; thinking, naturally, that it would be delightful the two 
 should travel together. She had been obliged, however, to post- 
 pone this enterprise. She thought Isabel a glorious creature, and 
 had spoken of her, covertly, in some of her letters, though she 
 never mentioned the fact to her friend, Avho would not have 
 taken pleasure in it and was not a regular reader of the Inter- 
 viewer. Henrietta, for Isabel, was chiefly a proof that a woman 
 might suffice to herself and be happy. Her resources were of 
 the obvious kind ; but even if one had not the journalistic 
 talent and a genius for guessing, as Henrietta said, what the 
 public was going to want, one was not therefore to conclude that 
 one had no vocation, no beneficent aptitude of any sort, and 
 resign oneself to being trivial and superficial. Isabel was reso- 
 lutely determined not to be superficial. If one should wait 
 expectantly and trustfully, one would find some happy work to 
 one's hand. Of course, among her theories, this young lady was 
 not without a collection of opinions on the question of marriage. 
 The first on the list was a conviction that it was very vulgar to 
 think too much about it. From lapsing into a state of eagerness 
 on this point she earnestly prayed that she might be delivered ; 
 she held that a woman ought to be able to make up her life in 
 singleness, and that it was perfectly possible to be happy with- 
 out the society of a more or less coarse-minded person of another 
 sex. The girl's prayer was very sufficiently answered ; some- 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 65 
 
 thing pure and proud that there was in her something cold and 
 stiff, an unappreciated suitor with a taste for analysis might have 
 called it had hitherto kept her from any great vanity of conjec- 
 ture on the subject of possible husbands. Few of the men she 
 saw seemed worth an expenditure of imagination, and it made 
 her smile to think that one of them should present himself as an 
 incentive to hope and a reward of patience. Deep in her soul 
 it was the deepest thing there lay a belief that if a certain 
 light should dawn, she could give herself completely ; but this 
 image, on the whole, was too formidable to be attractive. Isabel's 
 thoughts hovered about it, but they seldom rested on it long ; 
 after a little it ended by frightening her. It often seemed to 
 her that she thought too much about herself ; you could have 
 made her blush, any day in the year, by telling her that she was 
 selfish. She was always planning out her own development, 
 desiring her own perfection, observing her own progress. Her 
 nature had for her own imagination a certain garden-like quality, 
 a suggestion of perfume and murmuring boughs, of shady bowers 
 and lengthening vistas, which made her feel that introspection 
 was, after all, an exercise in the open air, and that a visit to the 
 recesses of one's mind was harmless when one returned from it 
 with a lapful of roses. But she was often reminded that there 
 were other gardens in the world than those of her virginal soul, 
 and that there were, moreover, a great many places that were not 
 gardens at all only dusky, pestiferous tracts, planted thick with 
 ugliness and misery. In the current of that easy eagerness on 
 which she had lately been floating, which had conveyed her to 
 this beautiful old England and might carry her much further 
 still, she often checked herself with the thought of the thousands 
 of people who were less happy than herself a thought which 
 for the moment made her absorbing happiness appear to her a 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
66 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 kind of immodesty. What should one do with the misery of 
 the world in a scheme of the agreeable for oneself 1 It must be 
 confessed that this question never held her long. She was too 
 young, too impatient to live, too unacquainted with pain. She 
 always returned to her theory that a young woman whom after 
 all every one thought clever, should begin by getting a general 
 impression of life. This was necessary to prevent mistakes, and 
 after it should be secured she might make the unfortunate con- 
 dition of others an object of special attention. 
 
 England was a revelation to her, and she 'found herself as 
 entertained as a child at a pantomime. In her infantine excur- 
 sions to Europe she had seen only the Continent, and seen it 
 from the nursery window ; Paris, not London, was her father's 
 Mecca. The impressions of that time, moreover, had become 
 faint and remote, and the old-world quality in everything that 
 she now saw had all the charm of strangeness. Her uncle's 
 house seemed a picture made real ; no refinement of the agree- 
 able was lost upon Isabel ; the rich perfection of Gardencourt 
 at once revealed a world and gratified a need. The large, low 
 rooms, with brown ceilings and dusky corners, the deep em- 
 brasures and curious casements, the quiet light on dark, polished 
 panels, the deep ^greenness outside, that seemed always peep- 
 ing in, the sense of well-ordered privacy, in the centre of a 
 " property " a place where sounds were felicitously accidental, 
 where the tread was muffled by the earth itself, and in the 
 thick mild air all shrillness dropped out of conversation these 
 things were much to the taste of our young lady, whose taste 
 played a considerable part in her emotions. She formed a fast 
 friendship with her uncle, and often sat by his chair when he 
 had had it moved out to the lawn. He passed hours in the 
 open air, sitting placidly with folded hands, like a good old 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 67 
 
 man who had done his work and received his wages, and was 
 trying to grow used to weeks aud months made up only of off- 
 days. Isabel amused him more than she suspected the effect 
 she produced upon people was often different from what she 
 supposed and he frequently gave himself the pleasure of 
 making her chatter. It was by this term that he qualified her 
 conversation, which had much of the vivacity observable in that 
 of the young ladies of her country, to whom the ear of the world 
 is more directly presented than to their sisters in other lands. 
 Like the majority of American girls, Isabel had been encouraged 
 to express herself ; her remarks had been attended to ; she had 
 been expected to have emotions and opinions. Many of her 
 opinions had doubtless but a slender value, many of her emotions 
 passed away in the utterance; but they had left a trace in 
 giving her the habit of seeming at least to feel and think, and 
 in imparting, moreover, to her words, when she was really moved, 
 that artless vividness which so many people had regarded as 
 a sign of superiority. Mr. Touchett used to think that she re- 
 minded him of his wife when his wife was in her teens. It was 
 because she was fresh and natural and quick to understand, to 
 speak so many characteristics of her niece that he had fallen 
 in love with Mrs. Touchett. He never expressed this analogy to 
 the girl herself, however ; for if Mrs. Touchett had once been 
 like Isabel, Isabel was not at all like Mrs. Touchett. The old 
 man was full of kindness for her; it was a long time, as he said, 
 since they had had any young life in the house ; and our rustling, 
 quickly-moving, clear-voiced heroine was as agreeable to his sense 
 as the sound of flowing water. He wished to do something for 
 her, he wished she would ask something of him. But Isabel 
 asked nothing but questions ; it is true that of these she asked 
 a great many. Her uncle had a great fund of answers,, though 
 
 F 2 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 interrogation sometimes came in forms that puzzled him. She 
 questioned him immensely about England, about the British 
 constitution, the English character, the state of politics, the 
 manners and customs of the royal family, the peculiarities of 
 the aristocracy, the way of living and thinking of his neigh- 
 bours; and in asking to be enlightened on these points she 
 usually inquired whether they correspond with the descriptions 
 in the books. The old man always looked at her a little, with 
 his fine dry smile, while he smoothed down the shawl that was 
 spread across his legs. 
 
 "The books'?" he once said; "well, I don't know much 
 about the books. You must ask Ralph about that. I have 
 always ascertained for myself got my information in the 
 natural form. I never asked many questions even ; I just kept 
 quiet and took notice. Of course, I have had very good oppor- 
 tunities better than what a young lady would naturally have. 
 I am of an inquisitive disposition, though you mightn't think it 
 if you were to watch me ; however much you might watch me, 
 I should be watching you more. I have been watching these 
 people for upwards of thirty-five years, and I don't hesitate to 
 say that I have acquired considerable information. It's a very 
 fine country on the whole finer perhaps than what we give it 
 credit for on the other side. There are several improvements 
 that I should like to see introduced; but the necessity of them 
 doesn't seem to be generally felt as yet. When the necessity of 
 a thing is generally felt, they usually manage to accomplish it ; 
 but they seem to feel pretty comfortable about waiting till then. 
 I certainly feel more at home among them than I expected to 
 when I first came over; I suppose it's because I have had a 
 considerable degree of success. When you are successful you 
 naturally feel more at home." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 69 
 
 " Do you suppose that if I am successful I shall feel at home 1 ?" 
 Isabel asked. 
 
 " I should think it very probable, and you certainly will be 
 successful. They like American young ladies very much over 
 here ; they show them a great deal of kindness. But r you 
 mustn't feel too much at home, you know." 
 
 " Oh, I am by no means sure I shall like it," said Isabel, 
 somewhat judicially. "I like the place very much, but I am 
 not sure I shall like the people." 
 
 " The people are very good people ; especially if you like them." 
 
 " I have no doubt they are good," Isabel rejoined ; " but are 
 they pleasant in society 1 They won't rob me nor beat me ; but 
 will they make themselves agreeable to me 'I That's what I like 
 people to do. I don't hesitate to say so, because I always 
 appreciate it. I don't believe they are very nice to girls ; they 
 are not nice to them in the novels." 
 
 " I don't know about the novels," said Mr. Touchett. " I 
 believe fhe novels have a great deal of ability, but I don't 
 suppose they are very accurate. We once had a lady who wrote 
 novels staying here ; she was a friend of Ralph's, and he asked 
 her down. She was very positive, very positive ; but she was 
 not the sort of person that you could depend on her testimony. 
 Too much imagination I suppose, that was it. She afterwards 
 published a work of fiction in which she was understood to have 
 given a representation something in the nature of a caricature, 
 as you might say of my unworthy self. I didn't read it, but 
 Ralph just handed me the book, with the principal passages 
 marked. It was understood to be a description of my convers- 
 ation; American peculiarities, nasal twang, Yankee notions, 
 stars and stripes. Well, it was not at all accurate ; she couldn't 
 have listened very attentively. I had no objection to her giving 
 
70 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 a report of my conversation, if she liked ; but I didn't like the 
 idea that she hadn't taken the trouble to listen to it. Of course 
 I talk like an American I can't talk like a Hottentot. How- 
 ever I talk, I have made them understand me pretty well over 
 here. But I don't talk like the old gentleman in that ladys' 
 novel. He wasn't an American ; we wouldn't have him over 
 there ! I just mention that fact to show you that they are not 
 always accurate. Of course, as I have no daughters, and as 
 Mrs. Touchett resides in Florence, I haven't had much chance 
 to notice about the young ladies. It sometimes appears as if 
 the young women in the lower class were not very well treated ; 
 but I guess their position is better in the upper class." 
 
 " Dear me ! " Isabel exclaimed ; " how many classes have 
 they? About fifty, I suppose." 
 
 " Well, I don't know that I ever counted them. I never 
 took much notice of the classes. That's the advantage of being 
 an American here ; you don't belong to any class." 
 
 " I hope so," said Isabel. " Imagine one's belonging to an 
 English class ! " 
 
 " Well, I guess some of them are pretty comfortable 
 especially towards the top. But for me there are only two 
 classes: the people* I trust, and the people I don't. Of those 
 two, my dear Isabel, you belong to the first." 
 
 " I am much obliged to you," said the young girl, quickly. 
 Her way of taking compliments seemed sometimes rather dry ; 
 she got rid of them as rapidly as possible. But as regards this, 
 she was sometimes misjudged ; she was thought insensible to 
 them, whereas in fact she was simply unwilling to show how 
 infinitely they pleased her. To show that was to show too much. 
 " I am sure the English are very conventional," she added. 
 
 " They have got everything pretty well fixed," Mr. Touchett 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 71 
 
 admitted. " It's all settled beforehand they don't leave it to 
 the last moment." 
 
 " I don't like to have everything settled beforehand," said 
 the girl. " I like more unexpectedness." 
 
 Her uncle seemed amused at her distinctness of preference. 
 " Well, it's settled beforehand that you will have great success," 
 he rejoined. " I suppose you will like that." 
 
 " I shall not have success if they are conventional. I am not 
 in the least conventional. I am just the contrary. That's what 
 they won't like." 
 
 " No, no, you are all wrong," said the old man. " You can't 
 tell what they will like. They are very inconsistent ; that's 
 their principal interest." 
 
 " Ah well," said Isabel, standing before her uncle with her 
 hands clasped about the belt of her black dress, and looking up 
 and down the lawn " that will suit me perfectly ! " 
 
72 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE two amused themselves, time and again, with talking 
 of the attitude of the British public, as if the young lady had 
 been in a position to appeal to it ; but in fact the British public 
 remained for the present profoundly indifferent to Miss Isabel 
 Archer, whose fortune had dropped her, as her cousin said, into 
 the dullest house in England. Her gouty uncle received very 
 little company, and Mrs. Touchett, not having cultivated relations 
 with her husband's neighbours, was not warranted in expecting 
 visits from them. She had, however, a peculiar taste ; she 
 liked to receive cards. For what is usually called social inter- 
 course she had very little relish ; but nothing pleased her more 
 than to find her hall-table whitened with oblong morsels of 
 symbolic pasteboard. She nattered herself that she was a very 
 just woman, and had mastered the sovereign truth that nothing 
 in this world is got for nothing. She had played no social part 
 as mistress of Gardencourt, and it was not to be supposed that, 
 in the surrounding country, a minute account should be kept 
 of her comings and goings. But it is by no means certain that 
 she did not feel it to be wrong that so little notice was taken 
 of them, and that her failure (really very gratuitous) to make 
 herself important in the neighbourhood, had not much to do 
 with the acrimony of her allusions to her husband's adopted 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 73 
 
 country. Isabel presently found herself in the singular situation 
 of defending the British constitution against her aunt ; Mrs. 
 Touchett having formed the habit of sticking pins into this 
 venerable instrument. Isabel always felt an impulse to pull 
 out the pins ; not that she imagined they inflicted any damage 
 on the tough old parchment, but because it seemed to her that 
 her aunt might make better use of her sharpness. She was very 
 critical herself it was incidental to her age, her sex, and her 
 nationality; but she was very sentimental as well, and there 
 was something in Mrs. Touchett's dryness that set her own 
 moral fountains flowing. 
 
 " Now what is your point of view 1 " she asked of her aunt. 
 " "When you criticise everything here, you should have a point 
 of view. Yours doesn't seem to be American you thought 
 everything over there so disagreeable. When I criticise, I have 
 mine ; it's thoroughly American ! " 
 
 " My dear young lady," said Mrs. Touchett, " there are as 
 many points of view in the world as there are people of sense. 
 You may say that doesn't make them very numerous ! Ameri- 
 can? Never in the world; that's shockingly narrow. My 
 point of view, thank God, is personal ! " 
 
 Isabel thought this a better answer than she admitted ; it 
 was a tolerable description of her own manner of judging, but 
 it would not have sounded well for her to say so. On the lips 
 of a person less advanced in life, and less enlightened by 
 experience than Mrs. Touchett, such a declaration would savour 
 of immodesty, even of arrogance. She risked it nevertheless, 
 in talking with Ralph, with whom she talked a great deal, and 
 with whom her conversation was of a sort that gave a large 
 licence to violent statements. Her cousin used, as the phrase 
 is, to chaff her ; he very soon established with her a reputation 
 
74 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 for treating everything as a joke, and he was not a man to 
 neglect the privileges such a reputation conferred. She accused 
 him of an odious want of seriousness, of laughing at all things, 
 beginning with himself. Such slender faculty of reverence as he 
 possessed centred wholly upon his father; for the rest, he exercised 
 his wit indiscriminately upon his father's son, this gentleman's 
 weak lungs, his useless life, his anomalous mother, his friends 
 (Lord Warburton in especial), his adopted and his native country, 
 his charming new-found cousin. " I keep a band of music in my 
 ante-room," he said once to her. " It has orders to play without 
 stopping ; it renders me two excellent services. It keeps the 
 sounds of the world from reaching the private apartments, and 
 it makes the world think that dancing is going on within." It 
 was dance-music indeed that you usually heard when you came 
 within ear-shot of Ralph's band ; the liveliest waltzes seemed to 
 float upon the air. Isabel often found herself irritated by this 
 perpetual fiddling; she would have liked to pass through the 
 ante-room, as her cousin called it, and enter the private apart- 
 ments. It mattered little that he had assured her that they 
 were a very dismal place ; she would have been glad to under- 
 take to sweep them and set them in order. It was but half- 
 hospitality to let her remain outside ; to punish him for which, 
 Isabel administered innumerable taps with the ferrule of her 
 straight young wit. It must be said that her wit was exercised 
 to a large extent in self-defence, for her cousin amused himself 
 with calling her " Columbia," and accusing her of a patriotism 
 so fervid that it scorched. He drew a caricature of her, in 
 which she was represented as a very pretty young woman, 
 dressed, in the height of the prevailing fashion, in the folds of 
 the national banner. Isabel's chief dread in life, at this period 
 of her development, was that she should appear narrow-minded ; 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 75 
 
 what she feared next afterwards was that she should be so. 
 But she nevertheless made no scruple of abounding in her 
 cousin's sense, and pretending to sigh for the charms of her 
 native land. She would be as American as it pleased him to 
 regard her, and if he chose to laugh at her, she would give him 
 plenty of occupation. She defended England against his 
 mother, but when Ealph sang its praises, on purpose, as she 
 said, to torment her, she found herself able to differ from him 
 on a variety of points. In fact, the quality of this small ripe 
 country seemed as sweet to her as the taste of an October pear ; 
 and her satisfaction was at the root of the good spirits which 
 enabled her to take her cousin's chaff and return it in kind. If 
 her good-humour flagged at moments, it was not because she 
 thought herself ill-used, but because she suddenly felt sorry for 
 Ealph. It seemed to her that he was talking as a blind and 
 had little heart in what he said. 
 
 " I don't know what is the matter with you," she said to him 
 once ; " but I suspect you are a great humbug." 
 
 " That's your privilege," Ralph answered, who had not been 
 used to being so crudely addressed. 
 
 " I don't know what you care for ; I don't think you care for 
 anything. You don't really care for England when you praise it ; 
 you don't care for America even when you pretend to abuse it." 
 
 "I care for nothing but you, dear cousin," said Ralph. 
 
 " If I could believe even that, I should be very glad." 
 
 " Ah, well, I should hope so ! " the young man exclaimed. 
 
 Isabel might have believed it, and not have been far from 
 the truth. He thought a great deal about her; she was 
 constantly present to his mind. At a time when his thoughts 
 had been a good deal of a burden to him, her sudden arrival, 
 which promised nothing and was an open-handed gift of 
 
76 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 fate, had refreshed and quickened them, given them wings and 
 something to fly for. Poor Ralph for many weeks had been 
 steeped in melancholy ; his out-look, habitually sombre, lay 
 under the shadow of a deeper cloud. He had grown anxious 
 about his father, whose gout, hitherto confined to his legs, had 
 begun to ascend into regions more vital. The old man had 
 been gravely ill in the spring, and the doctors had whispered 
 to Ralph that another attack would be less easy to deal with. 
 Just now he appeared tolerably comfortable, but Ralph could 
 not rid himself of a suspicion that this was a subterfuge of the 
 enemy, who was waiting to take him off his guard. If the 
 manoeuvre should succeed, there would be little hope of any 
 great resistance. Ralph had always taken for granted that his 
 father would survive him that his own name would be the 
 first called. The father and son had been close companions, 
 and the idea of being left alone with the remnant of a tasteless 
 life on his hands was not gratifying to the young man, who had 
 always and tacitly counted upon his elder's help in making the 
 best of a poor business. At the prospect of losing his great 
 motive, Ralph was indeed mightily disgusted. If they might 
 die at the same time, it would be all very well ; but without 
 the encouragement* of his father's society he should barely have 
 patience to await his own turn. He had not the incentive 
 of feeling that he was indispensable to his mother ; it was 
 a rule with his mother to have no regrets. He bethought 
 himself, of course, that it had been a small kindness to his 
 father to wish that, of the two, the active rather than the 
 passive party should know the pain of loss ; he remembered 
 that the old man had always treated his own forecast of an 
 uncompleted career as a clever fallacy, which he should be 
 delighted to discredit so far as he might by dying first. But 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 77 
 
 of the two triumphs, that of refuting a sophistical son and that 
 of holding on a while longer to a state of being which, with all 
 abatements, he enjoyed, Ralph deemed it no sin to hope that 
 the latter might be vouchsafed to Mr. Touchett. 
 
 These were nice questions, but Isabel's arrival put a stop to 
 his puzzling over them. It even suggested that there might be 
 a compensation for the intolerable ennui of surviving his genial 
 sire. He wondered whether he were falling in love with this 
 spontaneous young woman from Albany ; but he decided that 
 on the whole he was not. After he had known her for a week, 
 he quite made up his mind to this, and every day he felt a little 
 more sure. Lord Warburton had been right about her ; she was 
 a thoroughly interesting woman. Ralph wondered how Lord 
 Warburton had found it out so soon ; and then he said it was 
 only another proof of his friend's high abilities, which he had 
 always greatly admired. If his cousin were to be nothing more 
 than an entertainment to him, Ralph was conscious that she was 
 an entertainment of a high order.* "A character like that," he 
 said to himself, "is the finest thing in nature. It is finer than 
 the finest work of art than a Greek bas-relief, than a great 
 Titian, than a Gothic cathedral. It is very pleasant to be so 
 well-treated where one least looked for it. I had never been 
 more blue, more bored, than for a week before she came ; I had 
 never expected less that something agreeable would happen. 
 Suddenly I receive a Titian, by the post, to hang on my wall 
 a Greek bas-relief to stick over my chimney-piece. The key of 
 a beautiful edifice is thrust into my hand, and I am told to walk 
 in and admire. My poor boy, you have been sadly ungrateful, 
 and now you had better keep very quiet and never grumble 
 again." The sentiment of these reflections was very just ; but it 
 was not exactly true that Ralph Touchett had had a key put 
 
78 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 into his hand. His cousin was a very brilliant girl, who would 
 take, as he said, a good deal of knowing ; but she needed the 
 knowing, and his attitude with regard to her, though it was 
 contemplative and critical, was not judicial. He surveyed the 
 edifice from the outside, and admired it greatly ; he looked in at 
 the windows, and received an impression of proportions equally 
 fair. But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses, and that he 
 had not yet stood under the roof. The door was fastened, and 
 though he had keys in his pocket he had a conviction that none 
 of them would fit. She was intelligent and generous ; it was a 
 fine free nature ; but what was she going to do with herself 1 
 This question was irregular, for with most women one had no 
 occasion to ask it. Most women did with themselves nothing at 
 all ; they waited, in attitudes more or less gracefully passive, for 
 a man to come that way and furnish them with a destiny. Isa- 
 bel's originality was that she gave one an impression of having 
 intentions of her own. "Whenever she executes them," said 
 Ealph, " may I be there to see ! " 
 
 It devolved upon him of course to do the honours of the place. 
 Mr. Touchett was confined to his chair, and his wife's position 
 was that of a rather grim visitor ; so that in the line of conduct 
 that opened itself to Ralph, duty and inclination were harmoni- 
 ously mingled. He was not a great walker, but he strolled 
 about the grounds with his cousin a pastime for which the 
 weather remained favourable with a persistency not allowed for 
 in Isabel's somewhat lugubrious prevision of the climate ; and in 
 the long afternoons, of which the length was but the measure of 
 her gratified eagerness, they took a boat on the river, the dear 
 little river, as Isabel called it, where the opposite shore seemed 
 still a part of the foreground of the landscape ; or drove over the 
 country in a phaeton a low, capacious, thick-wheeled phaeton 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 79 
 
 formerly much used by Mr. Touchett, but which he had now 
 ceased to enjoy. Isabel enjoyed it largely, and, handling the 
 reins in a manner which approved itself to the groom as 
 " knowing," was never weary of driving her uncle's capital 
 horses through winding lanes and byways full of the rural 
 incidents she had confidently expected to find ; past cottages 
 thatched and timbered, past ale-houses latticed and sanded, past 
 patches of ancient common and glimpses of emptj* parks, between 
 hedgerows made thick by midsummer. When they reached 
 home, they usually found that tea had been served upon the 
 lawn, and that Mrs. Touchett had not absolved herself from the 
 obligation of handing her husband his cup. But the two for the 
 most part sat silent ; the old man with his head back and his 
 eyes closed, his wife occupied with her knitting, and wearing 
 that appearance of extraordinary meditation with which some 
 ladies contemplate the movement of their needles. 
 
 One day, however, a visitor had arrived. The two young 
 people, after spending an hour upon the river, strolled back to 
 the house and perceived Lord Warburton sitting under the trees 
 and engaged in conversation of which even at a distance the 
 desultory character was appreciable, with Mrs. Touchett. He 
 had driven over from his own place with a portmanteau, and 
 had asked, as the father and son often invited him to do, for a 
 dinner and a lodging. Isabel, seeing him for half-an-hour on 
 the day of her arrival, had discovered in this brief space that she 
 liked him ; he had made indeed a tolerably vivid impression on 
 her mind, and she had thought of him several times. She had 
 hoped that she should see him again hoped too that she should 
 see a few others. Gardencourt was not dull ; the place itself 
 was so delightful, her uncle was such a perfection of an uncle, 
 and Kalph was so unlike any cousin she had ever encountered 
 
80 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 her view of cousins being rather monotonous. Then her impres- 
 sions were still so fresh and so quickly renewed that there was 
 as yet hardly a sense of vacancy in the prospect. But Isabel 
 had need to remind herself that she was interested in human 
 nature, and that her foremost hope in coming abroad had been 
 that she should see a great many people. When Ralph said to 
 her, as he had done several times "I wonder you find this 
 endurable ; you ought to see some of the neighbours and some 
 of our friends because we have really got a few, though you 
 would never suppose it" when he offered to invite what he 
 called a "lot of people," and make the young girl acquainted 
 with English society, she encouraged the hospitable impulse and 
 promised, in advance, to be delighted. Little, however, for the 
 present, had come of Ealph' s offers, and it may be confided to 
 the reader that, if the young man delayed to carry them out, it 
 was because be found the labour of entertaining his cousin by 
 no means so severe as to require extraneous help. Isabel had 
 spoken to him very often about u specimens " ; it was a word 
 that played a considerable part in her vocabulary ; she had 
 given him to understand that she wished to see English 
 society illustrated by figures. 
 
 "Well now, there's a specimen," he said to her, as they 
 walked up from the river-side, and he recognised Lord Warburton. 
 
 " A specimen of what ? " asked the girl. 
 
 " A specimen of an English gentleman." 
 
 " Do you mean they are all like him 1 " 
 
 " Oh no ; they are not all like him." 
 
 " He's a favourable specimen, then," said Isabel ; " because I 
 am sure he is good." 
 
 " Yes, he is very good. And he is very fortunate." 
 
 The fortunate Lord Warburton exchanged a handshake with 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 81 
 
 our heroine, and hoped she was very well. " But I needn't ask 
 that," he said, "since you have been handling the oars." 
 
 " I have been rowing a little," Isabel answered ; " but how 
 should you know it 1 " 
 
 " Oh, I know he doesn't row ; he's too lazy," said his lordship, 
 indicating Ealph Touchett, with a laugh. 
 
 " He has a good excuse for his laziness," Isabel rejoined, 
 lowering her voice a little. 
 
 " Ah, he has a good excuse for everything ! " cried Lord 
 Warburton, still with his deep, agreeable laugh. 
 
 " My excuse for not rowing is that my cousin rows so well," 
 said Ralph. " She does everything well. She touches nothing 
 that she doesn't adorn ! " 
 
 "It makes one want to be touched, Miss Archer," Lord 
 Warburton declared. 
 
 " Be touched in the right sense, and you will never look the 
 worse for it," said Isabel, who, if it pleased her to hear it said 
 that her accomplishments were numerous, was happily able to 
 reflect that sue}} complacency was not the indication of a feeble 
 mind, inasmuch as there were several things in which she 
 excelled. Her desire to think well of herself always needed to 
 be supported by proof; though it is possible that this fact is not 
 the sign of a milder egotism. 
 
 Lord Warburton not only spent the night at Gardencourt, but 
 he was persuaded to remain over the second day ; and when the 
 second day was ended, he determined to postpone his departure 
 till the morrow. During this period he addressed much of his 
 conversation to Isabel, who accepted this evidence of his esteem 
 with a very good grace. She found herself liking him extremely ; 
 the first impression he had made upon her was pleasant, but at 
 
 the end of an evening spent in his society she thought him quite 
 VOL. i. G 
 
82 THE POKTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 one of the most delectable persons she had met. She retired to 
 rest with a sense of good fortune, with a quickened consciousness 
 of the pleasantness of life. " It's very nice to know two such 
 charming people as those," she said, meaning by " those " her 
 cousin and her cousin's friend. It must be added, moreover, 
 that an incident had occurred which might have seemed to put 
 her good humour to the test. Mr. Touchett went to bed at 
 half-past nine o'clock, but his wife remained in the drawing- 
 room with the other members of the party. She prolonged her 
 vigil for something less than an hour, and then rising, she said 
 to Isabel that it was time they should bid the gentlemen good 
 night. Isabel had as yet no desire to go to bed ; the occasion 
 wore, to her sense, a festive character, and feasts were not in the 
 habit of terminating so early. So, without further thought, she 
 replied, very simply 
 
 " Need I go, dear aunt 1 I will come up in half -an-h our." 
 
 "It's impossible I should wait for you," Mrs. Touchett 
 answered. 
 
 " Ah, you needn't wait ! Ralph will light my candle," said 
 Isabel, smiling. 
 
 " I will light your candle ; do let me light your candle, Miss 
 Archer!" Lord Warburton exclaimed. "Only I beg it shall 
 not be before midnight." 
 
 Mrs. Touchett fixed her bright little eyes upon him for a 
 moment, and then transferred them to her niece. 
 
 " You can't stay alone with the gentlemen. You are not 
 you are not at Albany, my dear." 
 
 Isabel rose, blushing. 
 
 " I wish I were," she said. 
 
 " Oh, I say, mother ! " Ralph broke out. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Touchett," Lord Warburton murmured. 
 

 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 83 
 
 " I didn't make your country, my lord," Mrs. Touchett said 
 majestically. " I must take it as I find it." 
 
 " Can't I stay with my own cousin ^ " Isabel inquired. 
 
 " I am not aware that Lord Warburton is your cousin." 
 
 " Perhaps I had better go to bed ! " the visitor exclaimed. 
 " That will arrange it." 
 
 Mrs. Touchett gave a little look of despair, and sat down 
 again. 
 
 "Oh, if it's necessary, I will stay -up till midnight," she 
 said. 
 
 Kalph meanwhile handed Isabel her candlestick. He had 
 been watching her ; it had seemed to him that her temper was 
 stirred an accident that might be interesting. But if he had 
 expected an exhibition of temper, he was disappointed, for the 
 girl simply laughed a little, nodded good night, and withdrew, 
 accompanied by her aunt. For himself he was annoyed at his 
 mother, though he thought she was right. Above-stairs, the two 
 ladies separated at Mrs. Touchett's door. Isabel had said nothing 
 on her way up. 
 
 " Of course you are displeased at my interfering with you, 
 said Mrs. Touchett. 
 
 Isabel reflected a moment. 
 
 " I am not displeased, but I am surprised and a good deal 
 puzzled. Was it not proper I should remain in the drawing- 
 room 1 " 
 
 " Not in the least. Young girls here don't sit alone with the 
 gentlemen late at night." 
 
 " You were very right to tell me then," said Isabel. " I don't 
 understand it, but I am very glad to know it." 
 
 " I shall always tell you," her aunt answered, " whenever I 
 see you taking what seems to be too much liberty." 
 
 G 2 
 
84 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Pray do ; but I don't say I shall always think your 
 remonstrance just." 
 
 " Very likely not. You are too fond of your liberty." 
 
 " Yes, I think I am very fond of it. But I always want to 
 know the things one shouldn't do." 
 
 " So as to do them 1 " asked her aunt. 
 
 % 
 
 '' So as to choose," said Isabel. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 85 
 
 VIII. 
 
 As she was much interested in the picturesque, Lord War- 
 burton ventured to express a hope that she would come some 
 day and see his house, which was a very curious old place. He 
 extracted from Mrs. Touchett a promise that she would bring 
 her niece to Lockleigh, and Ealph signified his willingness to 
 attend upon the ladies if his father should be able to spare him. 
 Lord Warburton assured our heroine that in the mean time his 
 sisters would come and see her. She knew something about his 
 sisters, having interrogated him, during the hours they spent 
 together while he was at Gardencourt, on many points connected 
 with his family. When Isabel was interested, she asked a great 
 many questions, and as her companion was a copious talker, she 
 asked him on this occasion by no means in vain. He told her 
 that he had four sisters and two brothers, and had lost both his 
 parents. The brothers and sisters were very good people " not 
 particularly clever, you know," he said, " but simple and respect- 
 able and trustworthy ; " and he was so good as to hope that Miss 
 Archer should know them well. One of the brothers was in the 
 Church, settled in the parsonage at Lockleigh, which was rather 
 a largeish parish, and was an excellent fellow, in spite of his 
 thinking differently from himself on every conceivable topic. 
 And then Lord Warburton mentioned some of the opinions held 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 by his brother, which were opinions that Isabel had often heard 
 expressed and that she supposed to be entertained by a consider- 
 able portion of the human family. Many of them, indeed, she 
 supposed she had held herself, till he assured her that she was 
 quite mistaken, that it was really impossible, that she had 
 doubtless imagined she entertained them, but that she might 
 depend that, if she thought them over a little, she would fino 
 there was nothing in them. When she answered that she had 
 already thought several of them over very attentively, he declared 
 that she was only another example of what he had often been 
 struck with the fact that, of all the people in the world, the 
 Americans were the most grossly superstitious. They were rank 
 Tories and bigots, every one of them ; there were no conserva- 
 tives like American conservatives. Her uncle and her cousin 
 were there to prove it ; nothing could be more mediaeval than 
 many of their views ; they had ideas that people in England 
 now-a-days were ashamed to confess to ; and they had the impud- 
 ence, moreover, said his lordship, laughing, to pretend they know 
 more about the needs and dangers of this poor dear stupid old 
 England than he who was born in it and owned a considerable 
 part of it the more shame to him ! From all of which Isabel 
 gathered that Lord Warburton was a nobleman of the newest 
 pattern, a reformer, a radical, a contemner of ancient ways. His 
 other brother, who was in the army in India, was rather wild 
 and pig-headed, and had not been of much use as yet but to 
 make debts for Warburton to pay one of the most precious 
 privileges of an elder brother. " I don't think I will pay any 
 more," said Warburton ; " he lives a monstrous deal better than 
 I do, enjoys unheard-of luxuries, arid thinks himself a much finer 
 gentleman than I. As I am a consistent radical, I go in only 
 for equality ; I don't go in for the superiority of the younger 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 87 
 
 brothers." Two of his four sisters, the second and fourth, were 
 married, one of them having done very well, as they said, the 
 other only so-so. The husband of the elder, Lord Haycock, was 
 a very good fellow, but unfortunately a horrid Tory; and his 
 wife, like all good English wives, was worse than her husband. 
 The other had espoused a smallish squire in Norfolk, and, though 
 she was married only the other day, had already five children. 
 This information, and much more, Lord Warburton imparted to 
 his young American listener, taking pains to make many things 
 clear and to lay bare to her apprehension the peculiarities of 
 English life. Isabel was often amused at his explicitness and 
 at the small allowance he seemed to make either for her own 
 experience or for her imagination. "He thinks I am a bar- 
 barian," she said, "and that I have never seen forks and spoons;" 
 and she used to ask him artless questions for the pleasure of 
 hearing him answer seriously. Then when he had fallen into 
 the trap " It's a pity you can't see me in my war-paint and 
 feathers," she remarked ; " if I had known how kind you are 
 to the poor savages, I would have brought over my national 
 costume ! " Lord Warburton had travelled through the United 
 States, and knew much more about them than Isabel ; he was 
 so good as to say that America was the most charming country 
 in the world, but his recollections of it appeared to encourage 
 the idea that Americans in England would need to have a great 
 many things explained to them. " If I had only had you to 
 explain things to me in America ! " he said. " I was rather 
 puzzled in your country ; in fact, I was quite bewildered, and 
 the trouble was that the explanations only puzzled me more. 
 You know I think they often gave me the wrong ones on 
 purpose ; they are rather clever about that over there. But 
 when I explain, you can trust me ; about what I tell you there 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 is no mistake." There was no mistake at least about his being- 
 very intelligent and cultivated, and knowing almost everything 
 in the world. Although he said the most interesting and 
 entertaining things, Isabel perceived that he never said them to 
 exhibit himself, and though he had a great good fortune, he was 
 as far as possible from making a merit of it. He had enjoyed 
 the best things of life, but they had not spoiled his sense of 
 proportion. His composition was a mixture of good-humoured 
 manly force and a modesty that at times was almost boyish ; 
 the sweet and wholesome savour of which it was as agreeable 
 as something tasted lost nothing from the addition of a tone 
 of kindness which was not boyish, inasmuch as there was a 
 good deal of reflection and of conscience in it. 
 
 " I like your specimen English gentleman very much." Isabel 
 said to Ralph, after Lord Warburton had gone. 
 
 "I like him too I love him well," said Ealph. "But I 
 pity him more." 
 
 Isabel looked at him askance. 
 
 " Why, that seems to me his only fault that one can't 
 pity him a little. He appears to have everything, to know 
 everything, to be everything." 
 
 " Oh, he's in a bad way," Ealph insisted. 
 
 " I suppose you don't mean in health ? " 
 
 " No, as to that, he's detestably robust. What I mean is 
 that he is a man with a great position, who is playing all sorts 
 of tricks with it. He doesn't take himself seriously." 
 
 " Does he regard himself as a joke ? " 
 
 " Much worse ; he regards himself as an imposition as an 
 abuse." 
 
 " Well, perhaps he is," said Isabel. 
 
 "Perhaps he is though on the whole I don't think so. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 89 
 
 But in that case, what is more pitiable than a sentient, self- 
 conscious abuse, planted by other hands, deeply rooted, but 
 aching with a sense of its injustice? For me, I could take the 
 poor fellow very seriously ; he occupies a position that appeals 
 to my imagination. Great responsibilities, great opportunities, 
 great consideration, great wealth, great power, a natural share in 
 the public affairs of a great country. But he is all in a muddle 
 about himself, his position, his power, and everything else. He 
 is the victim of a critical age ; he has ceased to believe in him- 
 self, and he doesn't know what to believe in. When I attempt 
 to tell him (because if I were he, I know very well what I 
 should believe in), he calls me an old-fashioned and narrow- 
 minded person. I believe he seriously thinks me an awful 
 Philistine ; he says I don't understand my time. I understand 
 it certainly better than he, who can neither abolish himself as a 
 nuisance nor maintain himself as an institution." 
 
 " He doesn't look very wretched," Isabel observed. 
 
 " Possibly not ; though, being a man of imagination, I think 
 he often has uncomfortable hours. But what is it to say of a 
 man of bis opportunities that he is not miserable ? Besides, I 
 believe he is." 
 
 " I don't," said Isabel. 
 
 " Well/' her cousin rejoined, " if he is not, he ought to be ! " 
 
 In the afternoon she spent an hour with her uncle on the 
 lawn, where the old man sat, as usual, with his shawl over his 
 legs and his large cup of diluted tea in his hands. In the course 
 of conversation he asked her what she thought of their late visitor. 
 
 " I think he is charming," Isabel answered. 
 
 "He's a fine fellow," said Mr. Touchett, "but I don't 
 recommend you to fall in love with him." 
 
 "I shall not do it then; I shall never fall in love but on 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 your recommendation. Moreover," Isabel added, "my cousin 
 gives me a rather sad account of Lord Warburton." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ? I don't know what there may be to say, but 
 you must remember that Ealph is rather fanciful." 
 
 "He thinks Lord Warburton is too radical or not radical 
 enough ! I don't quite understand which," said Isabel. 
 
 The old man shook his head slowly, smiled, and put down 
 his cup. 
 
 " I don't know which, either. He goes very far, but it is 
 quite possible he doesn't go far enough. He seems to want to do 
 away with a good many things, but he seems to want to remain 
 himself. I suppose that is natural ; but it is rather inconsistent." 
 
 " Oh, I hope he will remain himself," said Isabel. " If he 
 were to be done away with, his friends would miss him sadly." 
 
 " Well," said the old man, " I guess he'll stay and amuse his 
 friends. I should certainly miss him very much here at Garden- 
 court. He always amuses me when he comes over, and I think 
 he amuses himself as well. There is a considerable number like 
 him, round in society ; they are very fashionable just now. I 
 don't know what they are trying to do whether they are trying 
 to get up a revolution ; I hope at any rate they will put it off 
 till after I am gorie f . You see they want to disestablish every- 
 thing ; but I'm a pretty big landowner here, and I don't want 
 to be disestablished. I wouldn't have come over if I had 
 thought they were going to behave like that," Mr. Touchett 
 went on, with expanding hilarity. " I came over because I 
 thought England was a safe country. I call it a regular fraud, 
 if they are going to introduce any considerable changes ; there'll 
 be a large number disappointed in that case." 
 
 " Oh, I do hope they will make a revolution ! " Isabel 
 exclaimed. " I should delight in seeing a revolution." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 91 
 
 " Let me see," said her uncle, with a humorous intention ; 
 " I forget wh ether you are a liberal or a conservative. I have 
 heard you take such opposite views." 
 
 " I am both. I think I am a little of everything. In a 
 revolution after it was well begun I think I should be a 
 conservative. One sympathises more with them, and they have 
 a chance to behave so picturesquely." 
 
 " I don't know that I understand what you mean by 
 behaving picturesquely, but it seems to me that you do that 
 always, my dear." 
 
 " Oh, you lovely man, if I could believe that ! " the girl 
 interrupted. 
 
 " I am afraid, after all, you won't have the pleasure of seeing 
 a revolution here just now," Mr. Touchett went on. " If you 
 want to see one, you must pay us a long visit. You see, when 
 you come to the point, it wouldn't suit them to be taken at 
 their word." 
 
 " Of whom are you speaking 1 " 
 
 " Well, I mean Lord Warburton and his friends the radicals 
 of the upper class. Of course I only know the way it strikes 
 me. They talk about changes, but I don't think they quite 
 realise. You and I, you know, we know what it is to have 
 lived under democratic institutions ; I always thought them 
 very comfortable, but I was used to them from the first. But 
 then, I ain't a lord ; you're a lady, my dear, but I ain't a lord. 
 Now, over here, I don't think it quite comes home to them. 
 It's a matter of every day and every hour, arid I don't think 
 many of them would find it as pleasant as what they've got. 
 Of course if they want to try, it's their own business ; but I 
 expect they won't try very hard." 
 
 " Don't you think they are sincere ? " Isabel asked. 
 
92 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Well, they are very conscientious," Mr. Touchett allowed ; 
 "but it seems as if .they took it out in theories, mostly. Their 
 radical views are a kind of amusement ; they have got to have 
 some amusement, and they might have coarser tastes than that. 
 You see they are very luxurious, and these progressive ideas are 
 about their biggest luxury. They make them feel moral, and 
 yet they don't affect their position. They think a great deal of 
 their position ; don't let one of them ever persuade you he 
 doesn't, for if you were to proceed on that basis, you would be 
 pulled up very short." 
 
 Isabel followed her uncle's argument, which he unfolded with 
 his mild, reflective, optimistic accent, most attentively, and 
 though she was unacquainted with the British aristocracy, she 
 found it in harmony with her general impressions of human 
 nature. But she felt moved to put in a protest on Lord 
 Warburton's behalf. 
 
 " I don't believe Lord Warburton's a humbug," she said ; " I 
 don't care what the others are. I should like to see Lord 
 Warburton put to the test." 
 
 " Heaven deliver me from my friends ! " Mr. Touchett 
 answered. " Lord Warburton is a very amiable young man a 
 very fine young man. He has a hundred thousand a year. He 
 owns fifty thousand acres of the soil of this little island. He 
 has half-a-dozen houses to live in. He has a seat in Parliament 
 as I have one at my own dinner-table. He has very cultivated 
 tastes cares for literature, for art, for science, for charming 
 young ladies. The most cultivated is his taste for the new 
 views. It affords him a great deal of entertainment more 
 perhaps than anything else, except the young ladies. His old 
 house over there what does he call it, Lockleigh? is very 
 attractive; but I don't think it is-as pleasant as this. That 
 
THE POBTKAIT OF A LADY. 93 
 
 doesn't matter, however lie has got so many others. His views 
 don't hurt any one as far as I can see ; they^certainly don't hurt 
 himself. And if there were to be a revolution, he would come 
 off very easily ; they wouldn't touch him, they would leave him 
 as he is ; he is too much liked." 
 
 "Ah, he couldn't he a martyr even if he wished!" Isabel 
 exclaimed. " That's a very poor position/' 
 
 " He will never be a martyr unless you make him one," said 
 the old man. 
 
 Isabel shook her head; there might have been something 
 laughable in the fact that she did it with a touch of sadness. 
 
 " I shall never make any one a martyr." 
 
 " You will never be one, I hope." 
 
 " I hope not. But you don't pity Lord Warburton, then, as 
 Balphdoesr' 
 
 Her uncle looked at her a while, with genial acuteness. 
 
 " Yes, I do, after all ! " 
 
94 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE two Misses Molyneux, this nobleman's sisters, came 
 presently to call upon her, and Isabel took a fancy to the young 
 ladies, who appeared to her to have a very original stamp. It is 
 true that, when she spoke of them to her cousin as original, he 
 declared that no epithet could be less applicable than this to the 
 two Misses Molyneux, for that there were fifty thousand young 
 women in England who exactly resembled them. Deprived of 
 this advantage, however, Isabel's visitors retained that of an 
 extreme sweetness and shyness of demeanour, and of having, as 
 she thought, the kindest eyes in the world. 
 
 " They are not morbid, at any rate, whatever they are," our 
 heroine said to herself ; and she deemed this a great charm, for 
 two or three of the f friends of her girlhood had been regrettably 
 open to the charge (they would have been so nice without it), to 
 say nothing of Isabel's having occasionally suspected that it 
 might become a fault of her own. The Misses Molyneux were 
 not in their first youth, but they had bright, fresh complexions, 
 and something of the smile of childhood. Their eyes, which 
 Isabel admired so much, were quiet and contented, and their 
 figures, of a generous roundness, were encased in sealskin 
 jackets. Their friendliness was great, so great that they were 
 almost embarrassed to show it ; they seemed somewhat afraid of 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 95 
 
 the young lady from the other side of the world, and rather 
 looked than spoke their good wishes. But they made it clear to 
 her that they hoped she would come to lunch at Lockleigh, 
 where they lived with their brother, and then they might see her 
 very, very often. They wondered whether she wouldn't come 
 over some day and sleep ; they were expecting some people on 
 the twenty-ninth, and perhaps she would come while the people 
 were there. 
 
 " I'm afraid it isn't any one very remarkable," said the elder 
 sister; " but I daresay you will take us as you find us." 
 
 "I shall find you delightful; I think you are enchanting just 
 as you are," replied Isabel, who often praised profusely. 
 
 Her visitors blushed, and her cousin told her, after they were 
 gone, that if she said such things to those poor girls, they would 
 think she was quizzing them ; he was sure it was the first time 
 they had been called enchanting. 
 
 " I can't help it," Isabel answered. " I think it's lovely to be so 
 quiet, and reasonable, and satisfied. I should like to be like that." 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! " cried Ealph, with ardour. 
 
 " I mean to try and imitate them," said Isabel. " I want very 
 much to see them at home." 
 
 She had this pleasure a few days later, when, with Ealph and 
 his mother, she drove over to Lockleigh. She found the Misses 
 Molyneux sitting in a vast drawing-room (she perceived after- 
 wards it was one of several), in a wilderness of faded chintz ; 
 they were dressed on this occasion in black velveteen. Isabel 
 liked them even better at home than she had done at Garden- 
 court, and was more than ever struck with the fact that they 
 were not morbid. It had seemed to her before that, if they had 
 a fault, it was a want of vivacity ; but she presently saw that 
 they were capable of deep emotion. Before lunch she was alone 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 with them, for some time, on one side of the room, while Lord 
 Warburton, at a distance, talked to Mrs. Touchett. 
 
 " Is it true that your brother is such a great radical ?" Isabel 
 asked. She knew it was true, but we have seen that her interest 
 in human nature was keen, and she had a desire to draw the 
 Misses Molyneux out. 
 
 " Oh dear, yes ; he's immensely advanced," said Mildred, the 
 younger sister. 
 
 " At the same time, Warburton is very reasonable," Miss 
 Molyneux observed. 
 
 Isabel watched him a moment, at the other side of the room 
 he was evidently trying hard to make himself agreeable to 
 Mrs. Touchett. Ralph was playing with one of the dogs before 
 the fire, which the temperature of an English August, in the 
 ancient, spacious room, had not made an impertinence. "Do 
 you suppose your brother is sincere 1 " Isabel inquired with a 
 smile. 
 
 " Oh, he must be, you know ! " Mildred exclaimed, quickly ; 
 while the elder sister gazed at our heroine in silence. 
 
 " Do you think he would stand the test ] " 
 
 " The test 1 " 
 
 " I mean, for instance, having to give up all this ! " 
 
 " Having to give up Lockleigh ? " said Miss Molyneux, finding 
 her voice. 
 
 " Yes, and the other places ; what are they called ? " 
 
 The two sisters exchanged an almost frightened glance. "Do 
 you mean do you mean on account of the expense r < " the younger 
 one asked. 
 
 " I daresay he might let one or two of his houses," said the 
 other. 
 
 " Let them for nothing ? " Isabel inquired. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 97 
 
 " I can't fancy his giving up his property," said Miss 
 Molyneux. 
 
 " Ah, I am afraid he is an impostor ! " Isabel exclaimed. 
 " Don't you think it's a false position ? " 
 
 Her companions, evidently, were rapidly getting bewildered. 
 " My brother's position 1" Miss Molyneux inquired. 
 
 " It's thought a very good position," said the younger sister. 
 " It's the first position in the county." 
 
 " I suspect you think me very irreverent," Isabel took occa- 
 sion to observe. " I suppose you revere your brother, and are 
 rather afraid of him." 
 
 " Of course one looks up to one's brother," said Miss Molyneux, 
 simply. 
 
 " If you do that, he must be very good because you, evi- 
 dently, are very good." 
 
 " He is most kind. It will never be known, the good he does." 
 
 " His ability is known," Mildred added ; " every one thinks 
 it's immense." 
 
 "Oh, I can see that," said Isabel. "But if I were he, I 
 should wish to be a conservative. I should wish to keep every- 
 thing." 
 
 u I think one ought to be liberal," Mildred argued, gently. 
 " We have always been so, even from the earliest times." 
 
 " Ah well," said Isabel, " you have made a great success of it ; I 
 don't wonder you like it. I see you are very fond of crewels." 
 
 When Lord Warburton showed her the house, after lunch, it 
 seemed to her a matter of course that it should be a noble pic- 
 ture. Within, it had been a good deal modernised some of its 
 best points had lost their purity ; but as they saw it from the 
 gardens, a stout, grey pile, of the softest, deepest, most weather- 
 fretted hue, rising from a broad, still moat, it seemed to Isabel 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
98 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 a castle in a fairy-tale. The day was cool and rather lustreless ; 
 the first note of autumn had been struck ; and the watery sun- 
 shine rested on the walls in blurred and desultory gleams, wash- 
 ing them, as it were, in places tenderly chosen, where the ache 
 of antiquity was keenest. Her host's brother, the Vicar, had 
 come to lunch, and Isabel had had five minutes' talk with him 
 time enough to institute a search for theological characteristics 
 and give it up as vain. The characteristics of the Vicar of 
 Lockleigh were a big, athletic figure, a candid, natural counten- 
 ance, a capacious appetite, and a tendency to abundant laughter. 
 Isabel learned afterwards from her cousin that, before taking 
 orders, he had been a mighty wrestler, and that he was still, on 
 occasion in the privacy of the family circle as it were quite 
 capable of flooring his man. Isabel liked him she was in the 
 mood for liking everything; but her imagination was a good 
 deal taxed to think of him as a source of spiritual aid. The 
 whole party, on leaving lunch, went to walk in the grounds ; but 
 Lord Warburtoii exercised some ingenuity in engaging his 
 youngest visitor in a stroll somewhat apart from the others. 
 
 " I wish you to see the place properly, seriously," he said. 
 " You can't do so if your attention is distracted by irrelevant 
 gossip." His owu conversation (though he told Isabel a good 
 deal about the house, which had a very curious history) was not 
 purely archaeological ; he reverted at intervals to matters more 
 personal matters personal to the young lady as well as to him- 
 self. But at last, after a pause of some duration, returning for 
 a moment to their ostensible theme, " All, well," he said, " I 
 am very glad indeed you like the old house. I wish you could 
 see more of it that you could stay here a while. My sisters 
 have taken an immense fancy to you if that would be any 
 inducement." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 99 
 
 " There is no want of inducements," Isabel answered ; " but 
 I am afraid I can't make engagements. I am quite in my 
 aunt's hands." 
 
 " Ah, excuse me if I say I don't exactly believe that. I am 
 pretty sure you can do whatever you want." 
 
 " I am sorry if I make that impression on you ; I don't think 
 it's a nice impression to make." 
 
 "It has the merit of permitting me to hope." And Lord 
 Warburton paused a moment. 
 
 "To hope what?" 
 
 " That in future I may see you often." 
 
 " Ah," said Isabel, " to enjoy that pleasure, I needn't be so 
 terribly emancipated." 
 
 " Doubtless not ; and yet, at the same time, I don't think your 
 uncle likes me." 
 
 " You are very much mistaken. I have heard him speak very 
 highly of you." 
 
 " I am glad you have talked about me," said Lord Warburton. 
 " But, all the same, I don't think he would like me to keep 
 coming to Gardencourt." 
 
 "I can't answer for my uncle's tastes," the girl rejoined, 
 " though I ought, as far as possible, to take them into account. 
 But, for myself,' I shall be very glad to see you." 
 
 " Now that's what I like to hear you say. I am charmed 
 when you say that." 
 
 " You are easily charmed, my lord/' said Isabel. 
 
 " No, I am not easily charmed ! " And then he stopped a 
 moment. "But you have charmed me, Miss Archer," lie 
 added. 
 
 These words were uttered with an indefinable sound which 
 startled the girl ; it struck her as the prelude to something 
 
 H 2 
 
100 THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 grave ; she had heard the sound before, and she recognised it. 
 She had no wish, however, that for the moment such a prelude 
 should have a sequel, and she said, as gaily as possible and as 
 quickly as an appreciable degree of agitation would allow her, " I 
 am afraid there is no prospect of my being able to come here 
 again." 
 
 " Never 1 " said Lord Warburton. 
 
 " I won't say ' never ' ; I should feel very melodramatic." 
 
 " May I come and see you then some day next week ? " 
 
 " Most assuredly. What is there to prevent it 1 " 
 
 " Nothing tangible. But with you I never feel safe. I have 
 a sort of sense that you are always judging people." 
 
 "You don't of necessity lose by that." 
 
 " It is very kind of you to say so ; but even if' I gain, stern 
 justice is not what I most love. Is Mrs. Touchett going to take 
 you abroad 1 " 
 
 " I hope so." 
 
 " Is England not good enough for you 1 " 
 
 " That's a very Machiavellian speech ; it doesn't deserve an 
 answer. I want very much to see foreign lands as well." 
 
 " Then you will go on judging, I suppose." 
 
 " Enjoying, I hope, too." 
 
 " Yes, that's what you enjoy most ; I can't make out what you 
 are up to," said Lord Warburton. " You strike me as having 
 mysterious purposes vast designs ! " 
 
 " You are so good as to have a theory about me which I don't 
 at all fill out. Is there anything mysterious in a purpose enter- 
 tained and executed every year, in the most public manner, by 
 fifty thousand of my fellow-countrymen the purpose of improving 
 one's mind by foreign travel 1 " 
 
 " You can't improve your mind, Miss Archer," her companion 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 101 
 
 declared. " It's already a most formidable instrument. It looks 
 down on us all ; it despises us." 
 
 " Despises you 1 You are making fun of me," said Isabel, 
 seriously. 
 
 " Well, you think us picturesque that's the same thing. I 
 won't be thought picturesque, to begin with ; I am not so in the 
 least. I protest." 
 
 " That protest is one of the most picturesque things I have 
 ever heard," Isabel answered with a smile. 
 
 Lord Warburton was silent a moment. " You judge only from 
 the outside you don't care," he said presently. " You only 
 care to amuse yourself ! " The note she had heard in his voice 
 a moment before reappeared, and mixed with it now was an 
 audible strain of bitterness a bitterness so abrupt and inconse- 
 quent that the girl was afraid she had hurt him. She had often 
 heard that the English were a highly eccentric people ; and she 
 had even read in some ingenious author that they were, at bottom, 
 the most romantic of races. Was Lord Warburton suddenly 
 turning romantic was he going to make a scene, in his own 
 house, only the third time they had met 1 She was reassured, 
 quickly enough, by her sense of his great good manners, which 
 was not impaired by the fact that he had already touched the 
 furthest limit of good taste in expressing his admiration of a 
 young lady who had confided in his hospitality. She was 
 right in trusting to his good manners, for he presently went on, 
 laughing a little, and without a trace of the accent that had dis- 
 composed her " I don't mean, of course, that you amuse yourself 
 with trifles. You select great materials ; the foibles, the afflic- 
 tions of human nature, the peculiarities of nations ! " 
 
 "As regards that," said Isabel, "I should find in my own 
 nation entertainment for a lifetime. But we have a long drive, 
 
102 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 and my aunt will soon wish to start." She turned back toward 
 the others, and Lord Warburton walked beside her in silence. 
 But before they reached the others " I shall come and see you 
 next week," he said. 
 
 She had received an appreciable shock, but as it died away 
 she felt that she could not pretend to herself that it was alto- 
 gether a painful one. Nevertheless, she made answer to this 
 declaration, coldly enough, "Just as you please." And her 
 coldness was not coquetry a quality that she possessed in a 
 much smaller degree than would have seemed probable to many 
 critics ; it came from a certain fear. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 103 
 
 
 X. 
 
 THE day after her visit to Lockleigh she received a note from 
 her friend, Miss Stackpole a note of which the envelope, 
 exhibiting in conjunction the postmark of Liverpool and the 
 neat calligraphy of the quick-fingered Henrietta, caused her some 
 liveliness of emotion. " Here I am, my lovely friend," Miss 
 Stackpole wrote ; "I managed to get off at last. I decided only 
 the night before I left New York the Interviewer having come 
 round to my figure. I put a few things into a bag, like a veteran 
 journalist, and came down to the steamer in a street-car. Where 
 are you, and where can we meet 1 I suppose you are visiting at 
 some castle or other, and have already acquired the correct 
 accent. Perhaps, even, you have married a lord ; I almost hope 
 you have, for I want some introductions to the first people, and 
 shall count on you for a few. The Interviewer wants some light 
 on the nobility. My first impressions (of the people at large) 
 are not rose-coloured ; but I wish to talk them over with you, 
 and you know that whatever I am, at least I am not superficial. 
 I have also something very particular to tell you. Do appoint a 
 meeting as quickly as you can ; come to London (I should like 
 so much to visit the sights with you), or else let me come to you, 
 wherever you are. I will do so with pleasure ; for you know 
 
104 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 everything interests me, and I wish to see as much as possible of 
 the inner life." 
 
 Isabel did not show this letter to her uncle ; but she acquainted 
 him with its purport, and, as she expected, he begged her 
 instantly to assure Miss Stackpole, in his name, that he should 
 be delighted to receive her at Gardencourt. " Though she is a 
 literary lady," he said, k< I suppose that, being an American, she 
 won't reproduce me, as that other one did. She has seen others 
 like me." 
 
 " She has seen no other so delightful ! " Isabel answered ; but 
 she was not altogether at ease about Henrietta's reproductive 
 instincts, which belonged to that side of her friend's character 
 which she regarded with least complacency. She wrote to Miss 
 Stackpole, however, that she would be very welcome under Mr. 
 Touchett's roof; and this enterprising young woman lost no time 
 in signifying her intention of arriving. She had gone up to 
 London, and it was from the metropolis fc that she took the train 
 for "the station nearest to Gardencourt, where Isabel and Kalph 
 were in waiting to receive the visitor. 
 
 "Shall I love her, or shall I hate her?" asked Ealph, 
 while they stood on the platform, before the advent of the 
 train. 
 
 "Whichever you do will matter very little to her," said 
 Isabel. " She doesn't care a straw what men think of her." 
 
 " As a man I am bound to dislike her, then. She must be a 
 kind of monster. Is she very ugly 1 " 
 
 "No, she is decidedly pretty." 
 
 " A female interviewer a reporter in petticoats 1 I am very 
 curious to see her," Ealph declared. 
 
 " It is very easy to laugh at her, but it is not easy to be as 
 brave as she." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 105 
 
 " I should think not ; interviewing requires bravery. Do you 
 suppose she will interview me 1 " 
 
 "Never in the world. She will not think you of enough 
 importance." 
 
 " You will see," said Ralph. " She will send a description of 
 us all, including Bunchie, to her newspaper." 
 
 " I shall ask her not to," Isabel answered. 
 
 " You think she is capable of it, then." 
 
 " Perfectly." 
 
 "And yet you have made her your bosom-friend T' 
 
 " I have not made her my bosom-friend ; but I like her, in 
 spite of her faults." 
 
 "Ah, well," said Ealph, "I am afraid I shall dislike her, in 
 spite of her merits." 
 
 " You will probably fall in love with her at the end of three 
 days." 
 
 "And have my love-letters published in the Interviewer? 
 Never ! " cried the young man. 
 
 The train presently arrived, and Miss Stackpole, promptly 
 descending, proved to be, as Isabel had said, decidedly pretty. 
 She was a fair, plump person, of medium stature, with a round 
 face, a small mouth, a delicate complexion, a bunch of light 
 brown ringlets at the back of her head, and a peculiarly open, 
 surprised-looking eye. The most striking point in her appear- 
 ance was the remarkable fixedness of this organ, which rested 
 without impudence or defiance, but as if in conscientious exercise 
 of a natural right, upon every object it happened to encounter. 
 It rested in this manner upon Ralph himself, who was somewhat 
 disconcerted by Miss Stackpole's gracious and comfortable aspect, 
 which seemed to indicate that it would not be so easy as he had 
 assumed to disapprove of her. She was very well dressed, in 
 
106 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 fresh, dove-coloured draperies, and Ralph saw at a glance that 
 she was scrupulously, fastidiously neat. From top to toe she 
 carried not an ink-stain. She spoke in a clear, high voice a 
 voice not rich, but loud, though after she had taken her place, 
 with her companions, in Mr. Touchett's carriage, she struck him, 
 rather to his surprise, as not an abundant talker. She answered 
 the inquiries made of her by Isabel, however, and in which the 
 young man ventured to join, with a great deal of precision and 
 distinctness ; and later, in the library at Gardencourt, when she 
 had made the acquaintance of Mr. Touchett (his wife not having 
 thought it necessary to appear), did more to give the measure of 
 her conversational powers. 
 
 " Well, I should like to know whether you consider yourselves 
 American or English," she said. " If once I knew, I could talk 
 to you accordingly." 
 
 "Talk to us anyhow, and we shall be thankful," Ralph 
 answered, liberally. 
 
 She fixed her eyes upon him, and there was something in 
 their character that reminded him of large, polished buttons ; he 
 seemed to see the reflection of surrounding objects upon the 
 pupil. The expression of a button is not usually deemed human, 
 but there was something in Miss Stackpole's gaze that made him, 
 as he was a very modest man, feel vaguely embarrassed and 
 uncomfortable. This sensation, it must be added, after he had 
 spent a day or two in her company, sensibly diminished, though 
 it never wholly disappeared. "I don't suppose that you are 
 going to undertake to persuade me that you are an American," 
 she said. 
 
 " To please you, I will be an Englishman, I will be a Turk ! " 
 
 "Well, if you can change about that way, you are very 
 welcome," Miss Stackpole rejoined. 
 
THE PORTKAIT OF A LADY. 107 
 
 " I am sure you understand everything, and that differences 
 of nationality are no barrier to you," Ealph went on. 
 
 Miss Stackpole gazed at him still. " Do you mean the foreign 
 languages ? " 
 
 " The languages are nothing. I mean the spirit the genius." 
 
 " I am not sure that I understand you," said the correspondent 
 of the Interviewer; "but I expect I shall before I leave." 
 
 " He is what is called a cosmopolitan," Isabel suggested. 
 
 " That means he's a little of everything and not much of any. 
 I must 'say I think patriotism is like charity it begins at 
 home." 
 
 " Ah, but where does home begin, Miss Stackpole 1 " Ealph 
 inquired. 
 
 " I don't know where it begins, but I know where it ends. 
 It ended a long time before I got here." 
 
 " Don't you like it over here ? " asked Mr. Touchett, with his 
 mild, wise, aged, innocent voice. 
 
 "Well, sir, I haven't quite made up my mind what ground I 
 shall take. I feel a good deal cramped. I felt it on the journey 
 from Liverpool to London." 
 
 " Perhaps you were in a crowded carriage," Ealph suggested. 
 
 " Yes, but it was crowded with friends a party of Americans 
 whose acquaintance I had made upon the steamer ; a most lovely 
 group, from Little Eock, Arkansas. In spite of that I felt 
 cramped I felt something pressing upon me; I couldn't tell 
 what it was. I felt at the very commencement as if I were not 
 going to sympathise with the atmosphere. But I suppose I 
 shall make my own atmosphere. Your surroundings seem very 
 attractive." 
 
 " Ah, we too are a lovely group ! " said Ealph. " Wait a 
 little and you will see." 
 
108 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 Miss Stackpole showed every disposition to wait, and evidently 
 was prepared to make a considerable stay at Gardencourt. She 
 occupied herself in the mornings with literary labour ; but in 
 spite of this Isabel spent many hours with her friend, who, 
 once her daily task performed, was of an eminently social 
 tendency. 
 
 Isabel speedily found occasion to request her to desist from 
 celebrating the charms of their common sojourn in print, having 
 discovered, on the second morning of Miss Stackpole's visit, that 
 she was engaged upon a letter to the Intervieiver, of which the 
 title, in her exquisitely neat and legible hand (exactly that of 
 the copy-books "which our heroine remembered at school), was 
 "Americans and Tudors Glimpses of Gardencourt." Miss 
 Stackpole, with the best conscience in the world, offered to read 
 her letter to Isabel, who immediately put in her protest. 
 
 " I don't think you ought to do that. I don't think you ought 
 to describe the place." 
 
 Henrietta gazed at her, as usual. " Why, it's just what the 
 people want, and it's a lovely place." 
 
 " It's too lovely to be put in the newspapers, and it's not what 
 my uncle wants." 
 
 "Don't you believe that!" cried Henrietta. "They are 
 always delighted, afterwards." 
 
 " My uncle won't be delighted nor my cousin, either. They 
 will consider it a breach of hospitality." 
 
 Miss Stackpole showed no sense of confusion; she simply 
 wiped her pen, very neatly, upon an elegant little implement 
 which she kept for the purpose, and put away her manuscript. 
 " Of course if you don't approve, I won't do it ; but I sacrifice 
 a beautiful subject." 
 
 " There are plenty of other subjects, there are subjects all 
 
THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 109 
 
 round you. "VVe will take some drives, and I will show you 
 some charming scenery." 
 
 " Scenery is not my department ; I always need a human 
 interest. You know I am deeply human, Isabel ; I always was," 
 Miss Stackpole rejoined. " I was going to bring in your cousin 
 the'alienated American. There is a great demand just now 
 for the alienated American, and your cousin is a beautiful speci- 
 men. I should have handled him severely." 
 
 " He would have died of it ! " Isabel exclaimed. " Not of the 
 severity, but of the publicity." 
 
 " Well, I should have liked to kill him a little. And I should 
 have delighted to do your uncle, who seems to me a much nobler 
 type the American faithful still. He is a grand old man ; I 
 don't see how he can object to my paying him honour." 
 
 Isabel looked at her companion in much wonderment ; it 
 appeared to her so strange that a nature in which she found so 
 much to esteem should exhibit such extraordinary disparities. 
 " My poor Henrietta," she said, " you have no sense of privacy." 
 
 Henrietta coloured deeply, and for a moment her brilliant eyes 
 were suffused ; while Isabel marvelled more than ever at her in- 
 consistency. " You do me great injustice," said Miss Stackpole, 
 with dignity. " I have never written a word about myself ! " 
 
 " I am very sure of that ; but it seems to me one should be 
 modest for others also ! " 
 
 " Ah, that is very good ! " cried Henrietta, seizing her pen 
 again. " Just let me make a note of it, and I will put it in a 
 letter." She was a thoroughly good-natured woman, and half 
 an hour later she was in as cheerful a mood as should have been 
 looked for in a newspaper-correspondent in want of material. 
 " I have promised to do the social side," she said to Isabel ; 
 " and how can I do it unless I get ideas 1 If I can't describe 
 
110 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 this place, don't you know some place I can describe 1 " Isabel 
 promised she would bethink herself, and the next day, in con- 
 versation with her friend, she happened to mention her visit to 
 Lord Warburton's ancient house. " Ah, you must take me 
 there that is just the place for me ! " Miss Stackpole exclaimed. 
 " I must get a glimpse of the nobility." 
 
 "I can't take you," said Isabel; "but Lord Warburton is 
 coming here, and you will have a chance to see him and observe 
 him. Only if you intend to repeat his conversation, I shall 
 certainly give him warning." 
 
 "Don't do that," her companion begged; "I want him to 
 be natural." 
 
 " An Englishman is never so natural as when he is holding 
 his tongue," Isabel rejoined. 
 
 It was not apparent, at the end of three days, that his cousin 
 had fallen in love with their visitor, though he had spent a good 
 deal of time in her society. They strolled about the park 
 together, and sat under the trees, and in the afternoon, when 
 it was delightful to float along the Thames, Miss Stackpole 
 occupied a place in the boat in which hitherto Ralph had had 
 but a single companion. Her society had a less insoluble quality 
 than Ralph had expected in the natural perturbation of his sense 
 of the perfect adequacy of that of his cousin ; for the corre- 
 spondent of the Interviewer made him laugh a good deal, and he 
 had long since decided that abundant laughter should be the 
 embellishment of the remainder of his days. Henrietta, on her 
 side, did not quite justify Isabel's declaration with regard to her 
 indifference to masculine opinion ; for poor Ralph appeared to 
 have presented himself to her as an irritating problem, which it 
 would be superficial on her part not to solve. 
 
 " What does he do for a living \ " she asked of Isabel, the 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. Ill 
 
 evening of her arrival. " Does he go round all day with his 
 hands in his pockets 1 " 
 
 " He does nothing," said Isabel, smiling; "he's a gentleman 
 of leisure." 
 
 " Well, I call that a shame when I have to work like a cotton- 
 mill," Miss Stackpole replied. " I should like to show him up." 
 
 " He is in wretched health ; he is quite unfit for work," Isabel 
 urged. 
 
 " Pshaw ! don't you believe it. I work when I am sick," 
 cried her friend. Later, when she stepped into the boat, on 
 joining the water-party, she remarked to Ealph that she sup- 
 posed he hated her he would like to drown her. 
 
 " Ah, no," said Ealph, " I keep my victims for a slower 
 torture. And you would be such an interesting one ! " 
 
 " Well, you do torture me, I may say that. But I shock all 
 your prejudices ; that's one comfort." 
 
 " My prejudices ] I haven't a prejudice to bless myself with. 
 There's intellectual poverty for you." 
 
 " The more shame to you ; I have some delicious prejudices. 
 Of course I spoil your flirtation, or whatever it is you call it, 
 with your cousin ; but I don't care for that, for I render your 
 cousin the service of drawing you out. She will see how thin 
 you are." 
 
 " Ah, do draw me out ! " Ealph exclaimed. " So few people 
 will take the trouble." 
 
 Miss Stackpole, in this undertaking, appeared to shrink from 
 no trouble ; resorting largely, whenever the opportunity offered, 
 to the natural expedient of interrogation. On the following day 
 the weather was bad, and in the afternoon the young man, by 
 way of providing in-door amusement, offered to show her the 
 pictures. Henrietta strolled through the long gallery in his 
 
112 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 society, while he pointed out its principal ornaments and men- 
 tioned the painters and subjects. Miss Stackpole looked at the 
 pictures in perfect silence, committing herself to no opinion, and 
 Ealph was gratified by the fact that she delivered herself of none 
 of the little ready-made ejaculations of delight of which the 
 visitors to Gardencourt were so frequently lavish. This young 
 lady, indeed, to do her justice, was but little addicted to the 
 use of conventional phrases ; there was something earnest and 
 inventive in her tone, which at times, in its brilliant deliberation, 
 suggested a person of high culture speaking a foreign language. 
 Ealph Touchett subsequently learned that she had at one time 
 officiated as art-critic to a Transatlantic journal ; but she appeared, 
 in spite of this fact, to carry in her pocket none of the small 
 change of admiration. Suddenly, just after he had called her 
 attention to a charming Constable, she turned and looked at him 
 as if he himself had been a picture. 
 
 " Do you always spend your time like this 1 " she demanded. 
 
 " I seldom spend it so agreeably," said Kalph. 
 
 " Well, you know what I mean without any regular occu- 
 pation." 
 
 " Ah," said Kalph, " I am the idlest man living." 
 
 Miss StackpolQ turned her gaze to the Constable again, and 
 Ralph bespoke her attention for a small Watteau hanging near 
 it, which represented a gentleman in a pink doublet and hose and 
 a ruff, leaning against the pedestal of the statue of a nymph in a 
 garden, and playing the guitar to two ladies seated on the grass. 
 
 " That's my ideal of a regular occupation/' he said. 
 
 Miss Stackpole turned to him again, and though her eyes had 
 rested upon the picture, he saw that she had not apprehended 
 the subject. She was thinking of something much more 
 serious. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 113 
 
 " I don't see how you can reconcile it to your conscience," 
 she said. 
 
 " My dear lady, I have no conscience ! " 
 
 "Well, I advise you to cultivate one. You will need it the 
 next time you go to America." 
 
 " I shall probably never go again." 
 
 " Are you ashamed to show yourself 1 " 
 
 Ralph meditated, with a gentle smile. 
 
 " I suppose that, if one has no conscience, one has no shame." 
 
 " Well, you have got plenty of assurance," Henrietta declared. 
 " Do you consider it right to give up your country 1 " 
 
 " Ah, one doesn't give up one's country any more than one 
 gives up one's grandmother. It's antecedent to choice." 
 
 " I suppose that means that you would give it up if you 
 could 1 What do they think of you over here 1 " 
 
 " They delight in me." 
 
 " That's because you truckle to them." 
 
 " Ah, set it down a little to my natural charm ! " Ralph urged. 
 
 " I don't know anything about your natural charm. If you 
 have got any charm, it's quite unnatural. It's wholly acquired 
 or at least you have tried hard to acquire it, living over here. 
 I don't say you have succeeded. It's a charm that I don't 
 appreciate, any way. Make yourself useful in some way, and 
 then we will talk about it." 
 
 " Well now, tell me what I shall do," said Ralph. 
 
 "Go right home, to begin with." 
 
 "Yes^see. And then 1" 
 
 " Take right hold of something." 
 
 " Well, now, what sort of thing 1 ?" 
 
 " Anything you please, so long as you take hold. Some new 
 idea, some big work." 
 
 VOL. I. 1 
 
114 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 "Is it very difficult to take hold 1 " Ralph inquired. 
 
 " Not if you put your heart into it." 
 
 " Ah, my heart," said Ralph. "If it depends upon my 
 heart " 
 
 " Haven't you got any ? " 
 
 " I had one a few days ago, but I have lost it since." 
 
 "You are not serious," Miss Stackpole remarked; "that's 
 what's the matter with you." But for all this, in a day or two 
 she again permitted him to fix his attention, and on this 
 occasion assigned a different cause to his mysterious perversity. 
 " I know what's the matter with you, Mr. Touchett," she said. 
 " You think you are too good to get married." 
 
 " I thought so till I ^knew you, Miss Stackpole," Ralph 
 answered; "and then I suddenly changed my mind." 
 
 " Oh, pshaw ! " Henrietta exclaimed impatiently. 
 
 " Then it seemed to me," said Ralph, " that I was not good 
 enough." 
 
 " It would improve you. Besides, it's your duty." 
 
 " Ah," cried the young man, " one has so many duties ! Is 
 that a duty too 1 " 
 
 " Of course it is did you never know that before t It's 
 every one's duty to get married." 
 
 Ralph meditated a moment ; he was disappointed. There 
 was something in Miss Stackpole he had begun to like ; it 
 seemed to him that if she was not a charming woman she 
 was at least a very good fellow. She was wanting in dis- 
 tinction, but, as Isabel had said, she was brave, and there 
 is always something fine about that. He had not supposed 
 her to be capable of vulgar arts ; but these last words struck 
 him as a false note. When a marriageable young woman 
 urges matrimony upon an unencumbered young man, the most 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 115 
 
 obvious explanation of her conduct is not the altruistic 
 impulse. 
 
 " Ah, well now, there is a good deal to be said about that," 
 Ralph rejoined. 
 
 " There may be, but that is the principal thing. I must say 
 I think it looks very exclusive, going round all alone, as if you 
 thought no woman was good enough for you. Do you think 
 you are better than any one else in the world 1 In America it's 
 usual for people to marry." 
 
 " If it's my duty," Ralph asked, " is it not, by analogy, yours 
 as well!" 
 
 Miss Stackpole's brilliant eyes expanded still further. 
 
 " Have you the fond hope of finding a flaw in my reason- 
 ing 1 Of course I have got as good a right to marry as any one 
 else." 
 
 " Well then," said Ralph, " I won't say it vexes me to see 
 you single. It delights me rather." 
 
 " You are not serious yet. You never will be." 
 
 " Shall you not believe me to be so on the day that I tell 
 you I desire to give up the practice of going round alone 1 " 
 
 Miss Stackpole looked at him for a moment in a manner 
 which seemed to announce a reply that might technically be 
 called encouraging. But to his great surprise this expression 
 suddenly resolved itself into an appearance of alarm, and even 
 of resentment. 
 
 " No, not even then," she answered, dryly. After which she 
 walked away. 
 
 " I have not fallen in love with your friend," Ralph said that 
 evening to Isabel, " though we talked some time this morning 
 about it." 
 
 "And you said something she didn't like," the girl replied. 
 
 I 2 
 
116 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 
 
 Ralph stared. " Has she complained of me 1 " 
 
 11 She told me she thinks there is something very low in the 
 tone of Europeans towards women." 
 
 " Does she call me a European 1 " 
 
 " One of the worst. She told me you had said to her some- 
 thing that an American never would have said. But she didn't 
 repeat it." 
 
 Ralph treated himself to a burst of resounding laughter. 
 
 " She is an extraordinary combination. Did she think I 
 was making love to her 1 " 
 
 " No ; I believe even Americans do that. But she apparently 
 thought you mistook the intention of something she had said, 
 and put an unkind construction on it." 
 
 " I thought she was proposing marriage to me, and I accepted 
 her. Was that unkind 1 " 
 
 Isabel smiled. " It was unkind to me. I don't want you 
 to marry." 
 
 " My dear cousin, what is one to do among you all 1 " Ralph 
 demanded. "Miss Stackpole tells me it's my bounden duty, 
 and that it's hers to see I do mine ! " 
 
 " She has a "great sense of duty," said Isabel, gravely. " She 
 has, indeed, and it's the motive of everything she says. That's 
 what I like her for. She thinks it's very frivolous for you to 
 be single; that's what she meant to express to you. If you 
 thought she was trying to to attract you, you were very 
 wrong." 
 
 " It is true it was an odd way ; but I did think she was 
 trying to attract me. Excuse my superficiality." 
 
 " You are very conceited. She had no interested views, and 
 never supposed you would think she had." 
 
 " One must be very modest, then, to talk with such women," 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 117 
 
 Ralph said, humbly. "But it's a very strange type. She is 
 too personal considering that she expects other people not to 
 be. She walks in without knocking at the door." 
 
 " Yes," Isabel admitted, " she doesn't sufficiently recognise the 
 existence of knockers ; and indeed I am not sure that she 
 doesn't think them a rather pretentious ornament. She thinks 
 one's door should stand ajar. But I persist in liking her." 
 
 "I persist in thinking her too familiar," Ralph rejoined, 
 naturally somewhat uncomfortable under the sense of having 
 been doubly deceived in Miss Stackpole. 
 
 " Well," said Isabel, smiling, " I am afraid it is because she 
 is rather vulgar that I like her." 
 
 " She would be flattered by your reason ! " 
 
 " If I should tell her, I would not express it in that way. I 
 should say it is because there is something of the ' people ' in 
 her." 
 
 " What do you know about the people 1 and what does she, 
 for that matter 1 " 
 
 " She knows a great deal, and I know enough to feel that she 
 is a kind of emanation of the great democracy of the continent, 
 the country, the nation. I don't say that she sums it all up, 
 that would be too much to ask of her. But she suggests it ; 
 she reminds me of it." 
 
 " You like her then for patriotic reasons. I am afraid it is 
 on those very grounds that I object to her." 
 
 " Ah," said Isabel, with a kind of joyous sigh, " I like so 
 many things ! If a thing strikes me in a certain way, I like it. 
 I don't want to boast, but I suppose I am rather versatile. I 
 like people to be totally different from Henrietta in the style 
 of Lord Warburton's sisters, for instance. So long as I look at 
 the Misses Molyneux, they seem to me to answer a kind of ideal. 
 
118 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 Then Henrietta presents herself, and I am immensely struck 
 with her ; not so much for herself as what stands behind her." 
 
 " Ah, you mean the back view of her," Ralph suggested. 
 
 "What she says is true," his cousin answered ; "you will never 
 be serious. I like the great country stretching away beyond 
 the rivers and across the prairies, blooming and smiling and 
 spreading, till it stops at the blue Pacific ! A strong, sweet, 
 fresh odour seems to rise from it, and Henrietta excuse my 
 simile has something of that odour in her garments." 
 
 Isabel blushed a little as she concluded this speech, and the 
 blush, together with the momentary ardour she had thrown into 
 it, was so becoming to her that Ralph stood smiling at her for a 
 moment after she had ceased speaking. 
 
 " I am not sure the Pacific is blue/' he said ; " but you are a 
 woman of imagination. Henrietta, however, is fragrant Hen- 
 rietta is decidedly fragrant ! " 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 119 
 
 XL 
 
 HE took a resolve after this not to misinterpret her words, 
 even when Miss Stackpole appeared to strike the personal note 
 most strongly. He bethought himself that persons, in her view, 
 were simple and homogeneous organisms, and that he, for his 
 own part, was too perverted a representative of human nature to 
 have a right to deal with her in strict reciprocity. He carried 
 out his resolve with a great deal of tact, and the young lady 
 found in her relations with him no obstacle to the exercise of 
 that somewhat aggressive frankness which was the social expres- 
 sion of her nature. Her situation at Garden court, therefore, 
 appreciate as we have seen her to be by Isabel, and full of 
 appreciation herself of that fine freedom of composition which, 
 to her sense, rendered Isabel's character a sister-spirit, and of 
 the easy venerableness of Mr. Touchett, whose general tone, as 
 she said, met with her full approval her situation at Garden- 
 court would have been perfectly comfortable, had she not con- 
 ceived an irresistible mistrust of the little lady to whom she had 
 at first supposed herself obliged to pay a certain deference as 
 mistress of the house. She presently discovered, however, that 
 this obligation was of the lightest, and that Mrs. Touchett cared 
 very little how Miss Stackpole behaved. Mrs. Touchett had 
 spoken of her to Isabel as a " newspaper-woman," and expressed 
 
120 THE PORTEAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 some surprise at her niece's having selected such a friend ; but 
 she had immediately added that she knew Isabel's friends were 
 her own affair, and that she never undertook to like them all, 
 or to restrict the girl to those she liked. 
 
 " If you could see none but the people I like, my dear, you 
 would have a very small society," Mrs. Touchett frankly 
 admitted ; " and I don't think I like any man or woman well 
 enough to recommend them to you. When it comes to recom- 
 mending, it is a serious affair. I don't like Miss Stackpole I 
 don't like her tone. She talks too loud, and she looks at me 
 too hard. I am sure she has lived all her life in a boarding- 
 house, and I detest the style of manners that such a way of 
 living produces. If you ask me if I prefer my own manners, 
 which you doubtless think very bad, I will tell you that I 
 prefer them immensely. Miss Stackpole knows that I detest 
 boarding-house civilisation, and she detests me for detesting it, 
 because she thinks it is the highest in the world. She would 
 like Gardencourt a great deal better if it were a boarding-house. 
 For me, I find it almost too much of one ! We shall never get 
 on together, therefore, and there is no use trying." 
 
 Mrs. Touchett was right in guessing that Henrietta disap- 
 proved of her, butshe had not quite put her finger on the reason. 
 A day or two after Miss Stackpole's arrival she had made some 
 invidious reflections on American hotels, which excited a vein 
 of counter-argument on the part of the correspondent of the 
 Interviewer, who in the exercise of her profession had acquired 
 a large familiarity with the technical hospitality of her country. 
 Henrietta expressed the opinion that American hotels were the 
 best in the world, and Mrs. Touchett recorded a conviction that 
 they were the worst. Ealph, with his experimental geniality, 
 suggested, by way of healing the breach, that the truth lay 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 121 
 
 between the two extremes, and that the establishments in 
 question ought to be described as fair middling. This contribu- 
 tion to the discussion, however, Miss Stackpole rejected with 
 scorn. Middling, indeed ! If they were not the best in the 
 world, they were the worst, but there was nothing middling 
 about an American hotel. 
 
 " We judge from different points of view, evidently," said 
 Mrs. Touchett. " I like to be treated as an individual j you 
 like to be treated as a ' party.' " 
 
 " I don't know what you mean," Henrietta replied. " I like 
 to be treated as an American lady." 
 
 " Poor American ladies ! " cried Mrs. Touchett, with a laugh. 
 " They are the slaves of slaves." 
 
 " They are the companions of freemen," Henrietta rejoined. 
 
 "They are the companions of their servants the Irish 
 chambermaid and the negro waiter. They share their work." 
 
 " Do you call the domestics in an American household 
 ' slaves ' 1 " Miss Stackpole inquired. " If that's the way you 
 desire to treat them, no wonder you don't like America." 
 
 " If you have not good servants, you are miserable," Mrs. 
 Touchett said, serenely. "They are very bad in America, but 
 I have five perfect ones in Florence." 
 
 " I don't see what you want with five," Henrietta could not 
 help observing. " I don't think I should like to see five persons 
 surrounding me in that menial position." 
 
 " I like them in that position better than in some others," 
 cried Mrs. Touchett, with a laugh. 
 
 " Should you like me better if I were your butler, dear 1 " her 
 husband asked. 
 
 " I don't think I should ; you would make a very poor 
 butler." 
 
122 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 
 
 " The companions of freemen I like that, Miss Stackpole," 
 said Kalph. " It's a beautiful description." 
 
 " When I said freemen, I didn't mean you, sir ! " 
 
 And this was the only reward that Ralph got for his compli- 
 ment. Miss Stackpole was baffled ; she evidently thought there 
 was something treasonable in Mrs. Touchett's appreciation of a 
 class which she privately suspected of being a mysterious survival 
 of feudalism. It was perhaps because her mind was oppressed 
 with this image that she suffered some days to elapse before she 
 said to Isabel in the morning, while they were alone together, 
 
 " My dear friend, I wonder whether you are growing faith- 
 
 " Faithless ? Faithless to you, Henrietta ? " 
 
 " ISTo, that would be a grea.t pain ; but it is not that." 
 
 " Faithless to my country, then 1 " 
 
 "Ah, that I hope will never be. When I wrote to you 
 from Liverpool, I said I had something particular to tell you. 
 You have never asked me what it is. Is it because you have 
 suspected 1 " 
 
 " Suspected what ? As a rule, I don't think I suspect/' 
 said Isabel. "I remember now that phrase in your letter, 
 but I confess I frad forgotten it. What have you to tell 
 me?" 
 
 Henrietta looked disappointed, and her steady gaze betrayed it. 
 
 " You don't ask that right as if you thought it important. 
 Yon are changed you are thinking of other things." 
 
 "Tell me what you mean, and I will think of that." 
 
 " Will you really think of it ? That is what I wish to be 
 sure of." 
 
 " I have not much control of my thoughts, but I will do my 
 best," said Isabel. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 123 
 
 Henrietta gazed at her, in silence, for a period of time which 
 tried Isabel's patience, so that our heroine said at last 
 
 "Do you mean that you are going to be married 1 " 
 
 " Not till I have seen Europe ! " said Miss Stackpole. " What 
 are you laughing at ? " she went on. " What I mean is, that Mr. 
 Goodwood came out in the steamer with me." 
 
 " Ah ! " Isabel exclaimed, quickly. 
 
 " You say that right. I had a good deal of talk with him ; 
 he has come after you." 
 
 " Did he tell you so ?" 
 
 "No, he told me nothing; that's how I knew it," said 
 Henrietta, cleverly. " He said very little about you, but I spoke 
 of you a good deal." 
 
 Isabel was silent a moment. At the mention of Mr. Good- 
 wood's name she had coloured a little, and now her blush was 
 slowly fading. 
 
 " I am very sorry you did that," she observed at last. 
 
 " It was a pleasure to me, and I liked the way he listened. 
 I could have talked a long time to such a listener ; he was 
 so quiet, so intense ; he drank it all in." 
 
 " What did you say about me 1 " Isabel asked. 
 
 " I said you were on the whole the finest creature I know." 
 
 " I am very sorry for that. He thinks too well of me already ; 
 he ought not to be encouraged." 
 
 " He is dying for a little encouragement. I see his face now, 
 and his earnest, absorbed look, while I talked. I never saw an 
 ugly man look so handsome ! " 
 
 "He is very simple-minded," said Isabel. " And he is not 
 so ugly." 
 
 " There is nothing so simple as a great passion." 
 
 " It is not a great passion ; I am very sure it is not that." 
 
124 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " You don't say that as if you were sure." 
 
 Isabel gave rather a cold smile. 
 
 " I shall say it better to Mr. Goodwood himself ! " 
 
 " He will soon give you a chance," said Henrietta. 
 
 Isabel offered no answer to this assertion, which her com- 
 panion made with an air of great confidence. 
 
 " He will find you changed," the latter pursued. " You have 
 been affected by your new surroundings." 
 
 " Very likely. I am affected by everything." 
 
 " By everything but Mr. Goodwood ! " Miss Stackpole ex- 
 claimed, with a laugh. 
 
 Isabel failed even to smile in reply ; and in a moment she 
 said 
 
 " Did he ask you to speak to me 1 " 
 
 "Not in so many words. But his eyes asked it and his 
 handshake, when he bade me good-bye." 
 
 " Thank you for doing so." And Isabel turned away. 
 
 " Yes, you are changed ; you have got new ideas over here," 
 her friend continued. 
 
 " I hope so," said Isabel ; " one should get as many new ideas 
 as possible." 
 
 " Yes ; but they shouldn't interfere with the old ones." 
 
 Isabel turned about again. " If you mean that I had 
 
 any idea with regard to Mr. Goodwood And then 
 
 she paused; Henrietta's bright eyes seemed to her to grow 
 enormous. 
 
 " My dear child, you certainly encouraged him," said Miss 
 Stackpole. 
 
 Isabel appeared for the moment to be on the point of denying 
 this charge, but instead of this she presently answered " It 
 is very true; I did encourage him." And then she inquired 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 125 
 
 whether her companion had learned from Mr. Goodwood what 
 he intended to do. This inquiry was a concession to curiosity, 
 for she did not enjoy discussing the gentleman with Henrietta 
 Stackpole, and she thought that in her treatment of the subject 
 this faithful friend lacked delicacy. 
 
 " I asked him, and he said he meant to do nothing," Miss 
 Stackpole answered. " But I don't believe that ; .he's not a man 
 to do nothing. He is a man of action. Whatever happens to 
 him, he will always do something, and whatever he does will 
 be right." 
 
 "I quite believe that," said Isabel. Henrietta might be 
 wanting in delicacy ; but it touched the girl, all the same, to 
 hear this rich assertion made. 
 
 "Ah, you do care for him," Henrietta murmured. 
 
 " Whatever he does will be right," Isabel repeated. " When 
 a man is of that supernatural mould, what does it matter to him 
 whether one cares for him ? " 
 
 "It may not matter to him, but it matters to one's self." 
 
 " Ah, what it matters to me, that is not what we are discuss- 
 ing," said Isabel, smiling a little. 
 
 This time her companion was grave. " Well, I don't care ; 
 you have changed," she replied. " You are not the girl you 
 were a few short weeks ago, and Mr. Goodwood will see it. I 
 expect him here any day." 
 
 " I hope he will hate me, then," said Isabel. 
 
 " I believe that you hope it about as much as I believe that 
 he is capable of it. " 
 
 To this observation our heroine made no rejoinder ; she was 
 absorbed in the feeling of alarm given her by Henrietta's intim- 
 ation that Caspar Goodwood would present himself at Garden- 
 court. Alarm is perhaps a violent term to apply to the uneasiness 
 
126 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 with which she regarded this contingency ; but her uneasiness 
 was keen, and there were various good reasons for it. She 
 pretended to herself that she thought the event impossible, and, 
 later, she communicated her disbelief to her friend ; but for the 
 next forty-eight hours, nevertheless, she stood prepared to hear 
 the young man's name announced. The feeling was oppressive ; 
 it made the air sultry, as if there were to be a change of 
 weather; and the weather, socially speaking, had been so agree- 
 able during Isabel's stay at Gardencourt that any change would 
 be for the worse. Her suspense, however, was dissipated on the 
 second day. She had walked into the park, in company with 
 the sociable Bunchie, and after strolling about for some time, in 
 a manner at once listless and restless, had seated herself on a 
 garden-bench, within sight of the house, beneath a spreading 
 beech, where, in a white dress ornamented with black ribbons, 
 she formed, among the flickering shadows, a very graceful and 
 harmonious image. She entertained herself for some moments 
 with talking to the little terrier, as to whom the proposal of an 
 ownership divided with her cousin had been applied as impar- 
 tially as possible as impartially as Bunchie's own somewhat 
 fickle and inconstant sympathies would allow. But she was 
 notified for the first time, on this occasion, of the finite character 
 of Bunchie's intellect; hitherto she had been mainly struck with 
 its extent. It seemed to her at last that she would do well to 
 take a book ; formerly, when she felt heavy-hearted, she had 
 been able, with the help of some well-chosen volume, to transfer 
 the seat of consciousness to the organ of pure reason. Of late, 
 however, it was not to be denied, literature seemed a fading 
 light, and even after she had reminded herself that her uncle's 
 library was provided with a complete set of those authors which 
 no gentleman's collection should be without, she sat motionless 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 127 
 
 and empty-handed, with her eyes fixed upon the cool green turf 
 of the lawn. Her meditations were presently interrupted by 
 the arrival of a servant, who handed her a letter. The letter 
 bore the London postmark, and was addressed in a hand that 
 she knew that she seemed to know all the better, indeed, as 
 the writer had been present to her mind when the letter was 
 delivered. This document proved to be short, and I may give 
 it entire. 
 
 "MY DEAR Miss ARCHER I don't know whether you will 
 have heard of my coming to England, but even if you have not, 
 it will scarcely be a surprise to you. You will remember that 
 when you gave me my dismissal at Albany three months ago, I 
 did not accept it. I protested against it. You in fact appeared 
 to accept my protest, and to admit that I had the right on my 
 side. I had come to see you with the hope that you would let 
 me bring you over to my conviction ; my reasons for entertaining 
 this hope had been of the best. But you disappointed it ; I 
 found you changed, and you were able to give me no reason for 
 the change. You admitted that you were unreasonable, and it 
 was the only concession you would make ; but it was a very 
 cheap one, because you are not unreasonable. No, you are not, 
 and you never will be. Therefore it is that I believe you will 
 let me see you again. You told me that I am not disagreeable 
 to you, and I believe it ; for I don't see why that should be. I 
 shall always think of you ; I shall never think of any one else. 
 I came to England simply because you are here ; I couldn't stay 
 at home after you had gone ; I hated the country because you 
 were not in it. If I like this country at present, it is only 
 because you are here. I have been to England before, but I 
 have never enjoyed it much. May I not come and see you 
 
128 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 for half-an-hour 1 This at present is the dearest wish of, yours 
 faithfully, 
 
 " CASPAR GOODWOOD." 
 
 Isahel read Mr. Goodwood's letter with such profound atten- 
 tion that she had not perceived an approaching tread on the soft 
 grass. Looking up, however, as she mechanically folded the 
 paper, she saw Lord Warburton standing before her. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 129 
 
 XII. 
 
 SHE put the letter into her pocket, and offered her visitor a 
 smile of welcome, exhibiting no trace of discomposure, and half 
 surprised at her self-possession. 
 
 " They told me you were out here," said Lord Warburton ; 
 " and as there was no one in the drawing-room, and it is really 
 you that I wish to see, I came out with no more ado." 
 
 Isabel had got up ; she felt a wish, for the moment, that he 
 should not sit down beside her. " I was just going in-doors," 
 she said. 
 
 " Please don't do that ; it is much pleasanter here ; I have 
 ridden over from Lockleigh ; it's a lovely day." His smile was 
 peculiarly friendly and pleasing, and his whole person seemed to 
 emit that radiance of good-feeling and good fare which had 
 formed the charm of the girl's first impression of him. It 
 surrounded him like a zone of fine June weather. 
 
 " We will walk about a little, then," said Isabel, who could 
 not divest herself of the sense of an intention on the part of her 
 visitor, and who wished both to elude the intention and to satisfy 
 her curiosity regarding it. It had flashed upon her vision once 
 before, and it had given her on that occasion, as we know, a 
 certain alarm. This alarm was composed of several elements, not 
 all of which were disagreeable \ she had indeed spent some days 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
130 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 in analysing them, and had succeeded in separating the pleasant 
 part of this idea of Lord Warburton's making love to her from 
 the painful. It may appear to some readers that the young lady 
 was both precipitate and unduly fastidious; "but the latter of 
 these facts, if the charge be true, may serve to exonerate her from 
 the discredit of the former. She was not eager to convince her- 
 self that a territorial magnate, as she had heard Lord Warburton 
 called, was smitten with her charms ; because a declaration from 
 such a source would point more questions than it would answer. 
 She had received a strong impression of Lord Warburton's being 
 a personage, and she had occupied herself in examining the idea. 
 At the risk of making the reader smile, it must be said that there 
 had been moments when the intimation that she was admired by 
 a " personage " struck her as an aggression which she would 
 rather have been spared. She had never known a personage 
 before ; there were no personages in her native land. When she 
 had thought of such matters as this, she had done so on the basis 
 of character of what one liked in a gentleman's mind and in 
 his talk. She herself was a character she could not help being 
 aware of that ; and hitherto her visions of a completed life had 
 concerned themselves largely with moral images things as to 
 which the question would be whether they pleased her soul. 
 Lord Warburton loomed up before* her, largely and brightly, as a 
 collection of attributes and powers which were not to be measured 
 by this simple rule, but which demanded a different sort of 
 appreciation an appreciation which the girl, with her habit of 
 judging quickly and freely, felt that she lacked the patience to 
 bestow. Of course, there would be a short cut to it, and, as Lord 
 Warburton was evidently a very fine fellow, it would probably 
 also be a safe cut. Isabel was able to say all this to herself, but 
 she was unable to feel the force of it* What she felt was that a 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 131 
 
 territorial, a political, a social magnate had conceived the design 
 of drawing her into the system in which he lived and moved. A 
 certain instinct, not imperious, but persuasive, told her to resist 
 it murmured to hex that virtually she had a system and an 
 orbit of her own. It told her other things besides things which 
 both contradicted and confirmed each other ; that a girl might 
 do much worse than trust herself to such a man as Lord War- 
 burton, and that it would be very interesting to see something of 
 his system from his own point of view ; that, on the other hand, 
 however, there was evidently a great deal of it which she should 
 regard only as an incumbrance, and that even in the whole there 
 was something heavy and rigid which would make it unaccept- 
 able. Furthermore, there was a young man lately come from 
 America who had no system at all ; but who had a character of 
 which it was useless for her to try to persuade herself that the 
 impression on her mind had been light. The letter that she 
 carried in her pocket sufficiently reminded her of the contrary. 
 Smile not, however, I venture to repeat, at this simple young 
 lady from Albany, who debated whether she should accept 
 an English peer before he had offered himself, and who 
 was disposed to believe that on the whole she could do better. 
 She was a person of great good faith, and if there was a great 
 deal of folly in her wisdom, those who judge her severely may 
 have the satisfaction of finding that, later, she became consist- 
 ently wise only at the cost of an amount of folly which will 
 constitute almost a direct appeal to charity. 
 
 Lord Warburton seemed quite ready to walk, to sit, or to do 
 anything that Isabel should propose, and he gave her this assur- 
 ance with his usual air of being particularly pleased to exercise a 
 social virtue. But he was, nevertheless, not in command of his 
 
 emotions, and as he strolled beside her for a moment, in silence, 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 looking at her without letting her know it, there was something 
 embarrassed in his glance and his misdirected laughter. Yes, 
 assuredly as we have touched on the point, we may return to 
 it for a moment again the English are the most romantic people 
 in the world, and Lord Warburton was about to give an example 
 of it. He was about to take a step which would astonish all'.his 
 friends and displease a great many of them, and which, superfici- 
 ally, had nothing to recommend it. The young lady who trod 
 the turf beside him had come from a queer country across the 
 sea, which he knew a good deal about ; her antecedents, her 
 associations, were very vague to his mind, except in so far as they 
 were generic, and in this sense they revealed themselves with a 
 certain vividness. Miss Archer had neither a fortune nor the sort 
 of beauty that justifies a man to the multitude, and he calculated 
 that he had spent about twenty-six hours in her company. He 
 had summed up all this the perversity of the impulse, which 
 had declined to avail itself of the most liberal opportunities to 
 subside, and the judgment of mankind, as exemplified particularly 
 in the more quickly-judging half of it; he had looked these 
 things well in the face, and then he had dismissed them from his 
 thoughts. He cared no more for them than for the rosebud in 
 his button-hole. Jt is the good fortune of a man who for the 
 greater part of a lifetime has abstained without effort from 
 making himself disagreeable to his friends, that when the need 
 comes for such a course it is not discredited by irritating 
 associations. 
 
 " I hope you had a pleasant ride," said Isabel, who observed 
 her companion's hesitancy. 
 
 " It would have been pleasant if for nothing else than that it 
 brought me here," Lord Warburton answered. 
 
 " Are you so fond of Gardencourt ? " the girl asked ; more 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 133 
 
 and more sure that he meant to make some demand of her ; 
 wishing not to challenge him if he hesitated, and yet to keep 
 all the quietness of her reason if he proceeded. It suddenly 
 came upon her that her situation was one which a few weeks 
 ago she would have deemed deeply romantic ; the park of an 
 old English country-house, with the foreground embellished by 
 a local nobleman in the act of making love to a young lady 
 who, on careful inspection, should be found to present remarkable 
 analogies with herself. Eut if she were now the heroine of the 
 situation, she succeeded scarcely the less in looking at it from 
 the outside. 
 
 " I care nothing for Gardencourt," said Lord Warburton ; " I 
 care only for you." 
 
 " You have known me too short a time to have a right to 
 say that, and I cannot believe you are serious." 
 
 These words of Isabel's were not perfectly sincere, for she 
 had no doubt whatever that he was serious. They were simply 
 a tribute to the fact, of which she was perfectly aware, that 
 those he himself had just uttered would have excited surprise 
 on the part of the public at large. And, moreover, if anything 
 beside the sense she had already acquired that Lord Warburton 
 was not a frivolous person had been needed to convince her, the 
 tone in which he replied to her would quite have served the 
 purpose. 
 
 " One's right in such a matter is not measured by the time, 
 Miss Archer ; it is measured by the feeling itself. If I were to 
 wait three months, it would make no difference ; I shall not be 
 more sure of what I mean than I am to-day. Of course I have 
 seen you very little; but my impression dates from the very 
 first hour we met. I lost no time ; I fell in love with you 
 then. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now 
 
134 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 that is not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels 
 for evermore. Those two days I spent here settled it ; I don't 
 know whether you suspected I was doing so, but I paid 
 mentally speaking, I mean the greatest possible attention to 
 you. Nothing you said, nothing you did, was lost upon me. 
 When you came to Gardencourt the other day or rather, when 
 you went away I was perfectly sure. Nevertheless, I made 
 up my mind to think it over, and to question myself narrowly. 
 I have done so ; all these days I have thought of nothing else. 
 I don't make mistakes about such things; I am a very 
 judicious fellow. I don't go off easily, but when I am touched, 
 it's for life. It's for life, Miss Archer, it's for life," Lord 
 Warburton repeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest voice 
 Isabel had ever heard, and looking at her with eyes that shone 
 with the light of a passion that had sifted itself clear of the 
 baser parts of emotion the heat, the violence, the unreason 
 and which burned as steadily as a lamp in a windless place. 
 
 By tacit consent, as he talked, they had walked more and 
 more slowly, and at last they stopped, and he took her hand. 
 
 " Ah, Lord Warburton, how little you know me ! " Isabel said, 
 very gently ; gently, too, she drew her hand away. 
 
 " Don't taunt me with that ; that I don't know you better 
 makes me unhappy enough already ; it's all my loss. But that 
 is what I want, and it seems to me I am taking the best way. 
 If you will be my wife, then I shall know you, and when I tell 
 you all the good I think of you, you will not be able to say it 
 is from ignorance." 
 
 " If you know me little, I know you even less," said Isabel. 
 
 "You mean that, unlike yourself, I may not improve on 
 acquaintance 1 ? Ah, of course, that is very possible. But 
 think, to speak to you as I do, how determined I must be 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 135 
 
 to try and give satisfaction ! You do like me rather, don't 
 you?" 
 
 " I like you very much, Lord Warburton," the girl answered ; 
 and at this moment she liked him immensely. 
 
 " I thank you for saying that ; it shows you don't regard me 
 as a stranger. I really believe I have filled all the other 
 relations of life very creditably, and I don't see why I should 
 not fill this one in which I offer myself to you seeing that I 
 care so much more about it. Ask the people who know me 
 well ; I have friends who will speak for me." 
 
 "I don't need the recommendation of your friends," said 
 Isabel. 
 
 "Ah now, that is delightful of you. You believe in me 
 yourself." 
 
 " Completely," Isabel declared \ and it was the truth. 
 
 The light in her companion's eyes turned into a smile, and he 
 gave a long exhalation of joy. 
 
 "If you are mistaken, Miss Archer, let me lose all I 
 possess ! " 
 
 She wondered whether he meant this for a reminder that he 
 was rich, and, on the instant, felt sure that he did not. He 
 was sinking that, as he would have said himself; and indeed 
 he might safely leave it to the memory of any interlocutor, 
 especially of one to whom he was offering his hand. Isabel 
 had prayed that she might not be agitated, and her mind was 
 tranquil enough, even while she listened and asked herself what 
 it was best she should say, to indulge in this incidental 
 criticism. What she should say, had she asked herself 1 ? Her 
 foremost wish was to say something as nearly as possible as 
 kind as what he had said to her. His words had carried 
 perfect conviction with them ; she felt that he loved her. 
 
136 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " I thank you more than I can say for your offer," she 
 rejoined at last ; " it does me great honour." 
 
 " Ah, don't say that ! " Lord Warburton broke out. " I was 
 afraid you would say something like that. I don't see what 
 you have to do with that sort of thing. I don't see why you 
 should thank me it is I who ought to thank you, for listening 
 to me ; a man whom you know so little, coming down on you 
 with such a thumper ! Of course it's a great question ; I must 
 tell you that I would rather ask it than have it to answer 
 myself. But the way you have listened or at least your 
 having listened at all gives me some hope." 
 
 " Don't hope too much," Isabel said. 
 
 " Oh, Miss Archer ! " her companion murmured, smiling 
 again in his seriousness, as if such a warning might perhaps be 
 taken but as the play of high spirits the coquetry of elation. 
 
 " Should you be greatly surprised if I were to beg you not to 
 hope at all ? " Isabel asked. 
 
 "Surprised? I don't know what you mean by surprise. It 
 wouldn't be that ; it would be a feeling very much worse." 
 
 Isabel walked on again ;' she was silent for some minutes. 
 
 " I am very sure that, highly as I already think of you, my 
 opinion of you, if I should know you well, would only rise. 
 But I am by no means sure that you would not be disappointed. 
 And I say that not in the least out of conventional modesty ; 
 it is perfectly sincere." 
 
 " I am willing to risk it, Miss Archer," her companion 
 answered. 
 
 " It's a great question, as you say ; it's a very difficult 
 question." 
 
 " I don't expect you, of course, to answer it outright. Think 
 it over as long as may be necessary. If I can gain by waiting. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 137 
 
 I will gladly wait a long time. Only remember that in the end 
 my dearest happiness depends upon your answer." 
 
 " I should be very sorry to keep you in suspense/' said 
 Isabel. 
 
 " Oh, don't mind. I would much rather have a good answer 
 six months hence than a bad one to-day." 
 
 " But it is very probable that even six months hence I should 
 not be able to give you one that you would think good." 
 
 " Why not, since you really like me ? " 
 
 " Ah, you must never doubt of that," said Isabel. 
 
 " Well, then, I don't see what more you ask ! " 
 
 " It is not what I ask ; it is what I can give. I don't think 
 I should suit you ; I really don't think I should." 
 
 " You needn't bother about that ; that's my affair. You 
 needn't be a better royalist than the king." 
 
 " It is not only that," said Isabel ; " but I am not sure I wish 
 to marry any one." 
 
 "Very likely you don't. I have no doubt a great many 
 women begin that way," said his lordship, who, be it averred, 
 did not in the least believe in the axiom he thus beguiled his 
 anxiety by uttering. " But they are frequently persuaded." 
 
 " Ah, that is because they want to be ! " 
 
 And Isabel lightly laughed. 
 
 Her suitor's countenance fell, and he looked at her for a 
 while in silence. 
 
 " I'm afraid it's my being an Englishman that makes you 
 hesitate," he said, presently. " I know your uncle thinks you 
 ought to marry in your own country." 
 
 Isabel listened to this assertion with some interest ; it had 
 never occurred to her that Mr. Touehett was likely to discuss 
 her matrimonial prospects with Lord Warburton. 
 
138 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Has he told you that 1 " she asked. 
 
 " I remember his making the remark ; he spoke perhaps of 
 Americans generally." 
 
 " He appears himself to have found it very pleasant to live in 
 England," said Isabel, in a manner that might have seemed a 
 little perverse, but which expressed both her constant perception 
 of her uncle's pictorial circumstances and her general dis- 
 position to elude any obligation to take a restricted view. 
 
 It gave her companion hope, and he immediately exclaimed, 
 warmly 
 
 " Ah, my dear Miss Archer, old England is a very good sort 
 of country, you know ! And it will be still better when we 
 have furbished it up a little." 
 
 " Oh, don't furbish it, Lord Warburton ; leave it alone ; I 
 like it this way." 
 
 " Well, then, if you like it, I am more and more unable to 
 see your objection to what I propose." 
 
 " I am afraid I can't make you understand." 
 
 " You ought at least to try ; I have got a fair intelligence. 
 Are you afraid afraid of the climate] We can easily live 
 elsewhere, you know. You can pick out your climate, the 
 whole world over.", 
 
 These words were uttered with a tender eagerness which 
 went to Isabel's heart, and she would have given her little 
 finger at that moment, to feel, strongly and simply, the 
 impulse to answer, "Lord Warburton, it is impossible for 
 a woman to do better in this world than to commit herself 
 to your loyalty." But though she could conceive the impulse, 
 she could not let it operate; her imagination was charmed, 
 but it was not led captive. What she finally bethought 
 herself of saying was something very different something 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 139 
 
 which altogether deferred the need of answering. " Don't 
 think me unkind if I ask you to say no more about this to-day." 
 
 " Certainly, certainly ! " cried Lord Warburton. " I wouldn't 
 bore you for the world." 
 
 " You have given me a great deal to think about, and I 
 promise you I will do it justice." 
 
 " That's all I ask of you, of course and that you will 
 remember that my happiness is in your hands." 
 
 Isabel listened with extreme respect .to this admonition, 
 but she said after a minute "I must tell you that what 
 I shall think about is some way of letting you know that what 
 you ask is impossible, without making you miserable." 
 
 " There is no way to do that, Miss Archer. I won't say that, 
 if you refuse me, you will kill me ; I shall not die of it. But I 
 shall do worse ; I shall live to no purpose." 
 
 " You will live to marry a better woman than I." 
 
 " Don't say that, please," said Lord Warburton, very gravely. 
 " That is fair to neither of us." 
 
 " To marry a worse one, then." 
 
 " If there are better women than you, then I prefer the bad 
 ones ; that's all I Can say," he went on, with the same gravity. 
 " There is no accounting for tastes." 
 
 His gravity made her feel equally grave, and she showed it 
 by again requesting him to drop the subject for the present. 
 " I will speak to you myself, very soon," she said. " Perhaps 
 I shall write to you." 
 
 " At your convenience, yes," he answered. " Whatever time 
 you take, it must seem to me long, and I suppose I must make 
 the best of that." 
 
 " I shall not keep you in suspense ; I only want to collect 
 my mind a little." 
 
140 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 He gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a 
 moment, with his hands behind him, giving short nervous 
 shakes to his hunting-whip. " Do you know I am very much 
 afraid of it of that mind of yours ? " 
 
 Our heroine's biographer can scarcely tell why, but the 
 question made her start and brought a conscious blush to her 
 cheek. She returned his look a moment, and then, with a note 
 in her voice that might almost have appealed to his compassion 
 " So am I, my lord ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 His compassion was not stirred, however ; all that he possessed 
 of the faculty of pity was needed at home. " Ah ! be merciful, 
 be merciful," he murmured. 
 
 "I think you had better go," said Isabel. " I will write to you." 
 
 " Very good ; but whatever you write, I will come and see 
 you." And then he stood reflecting, with his eyes fixed on the 
 observant countenance of Bunchie, who had the air of having 
 understood all that had been said, and of pretending to carry 
 off the indiscretion by a simulated fit of curiosity as to the roots 
 of an ancient beech. "There is one thing more," said Lord 
 Warburton. "You know, if you don't like Lockleigh if you 
 think it's damp, -or anything of that sort you need never go 
 within fifty miles of it. It is not damp, by the way ; I have 
 had the house thoroughly examined ; it is perfectly sanitary. 
 But if you shouldn't fancy it, you needn't dream of living in it. 
 There is no difficulty whatever about that ; there are plenty of 
 houses. I thought I would just mention it; some people don't 
 like a moat, you know. Good-bye." 
 
 " I delight in a moat," said Isabel. " Good-bye." 
 
 He held out his hand, and she gave him hers a moment 
 a moment long enough for him to bend his head and 
 kiss it. Then, shaking his hunting-whip with little quick 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 141 
 
 strokes, he walked rapidly away. He was evidently very 
 nervous. 
 
 Isabel herself was nervous, but she was not affected as she 
 would have imagined. What she felt was not a great responsi- 
 bility, a great difficulty of choice ; for it appeared to her that 
 there was no choice in the question. She could not marry Lord 
 Warburton ; the idea failed to correspond to any vision of 
 happiness that she had hitherto entertained, or was now capable 
 of entertaining. She must write this to him, she must convince 
 him, and this duty was comparatively simple. But what 
 disturbed her, in the sense that it struck her with wonderment, 
 was this very fact that it cost her so little to refuse a great 
 opportunity. With whatever qualifications one would, Lord 
 Warburton had offered her a great opportunity; the situation 
 might have discomforts, might contain elements that would 
 displease her, but she did her sex no injustice in believing that 
 nineteen women out of twenty would accommodate themselves 
 to it with extreme zeal. Why then upon her also should it not 
 impose itself 1 Who was she, what was she, that she should 
 hold herself superior] What view of life, what design upon 
 fate, what conception of happiness, had she that pretended to be 
 larger than this large occasion 1 If she would not do this, then 
 she must do great things, she must do something greater. Poor 
 Isabel found occasion to remind herself from time to time that 
 she must not be too proud, and nothing could be more sincere 
 than her prayer to be delivered from such a danger; for the 
 isolation and loneliness of pride had for her mind the horror 
 of a desert place. If it were pride that interfered with her 
 accepting Lord Warburton, it was singularly misplaced ; and she 
 was so conscious of liking him that she ventured to assure 
 herself it was not. She liked him too much to marry him, that 
 
142 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 was the point ; something told her that she should not be 
 satisfied, and to inflict upon a man who offered so much a 
 wife with a tendency to criticise would he a peculiarly discredit- 
 able act. She had promised him that she would consider 
 his proposal, and when, after he had left her, she wandered 
 back to the' bench where he had found, her, and lost herself 
 in meditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her 
 word. But this was not the case ; she was wondering whether 
 she were not a cold, hard girl; and when at last she got up 
 and rather quickly went back to the house, it was because, 
 as she had said to Lord Warburton, she was really frightened 
 at herself. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 143 
 
 XIII. 
 
 IT was this feeling, and not the wish to ask advice she had 
 no desire whatever for that that led her to speak to her uncle 
 of what Lord Warburton had said to her. She wished to speak 
 to some one ; she should feel more natural, more human, and her 
 uncle, for this purpose, presented himself in a more attractive 
 light than either her aunt or her friend Henrietta. Her cousin, 
 of course, was a possible confidant; but it would have been 
 disagreeable to her to confide this particular matter to Ealph. 
 So, the next day, after breakfast, she sought her occasion. Her 
 uncle never left his apartment till the afternoon ; but he received 
 his cronies, as he said, in his dressing-room. Isabel had quite 
 taken her place in the class so designated, which, for the rest, 
 included the old man's son, his physician, his personal servant, 
 and even Miss Stackpole. Mrs. Touchett did not figure in the 
 list, and this was an obstacle the less to Isabel's finding her 
 uncle alone. He sat in a complicated mechanical chair, at the 
 open window of his room, looking westward over the park and 
 the river, with his newspapers and letters piled up beside him, 
 his toilet freshly and minutely made, and his smooth, speculative 
 face composed to benevolent expectation. 
 
 Isabel approached her point very directly. " I think I ought 
 to let you know that Lord Warburton ha,s asked me to marry 
 
144 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 him. I suppose I ought to tell my aunt ; but it seems best to 
 tell you first." 
 
 The old man expressed no surprise, but thanked her for the 
 confidence she showed him. "Do you mind telling me whether 
 you accepted him ? " he added. 
 
 "I have not answered him definitely yet; I have taken, -a 
 little time to think of it, because that seems more respectful. 
 But I shall not accept him." 
 
 Mr. Touchett made no comment upon this ; he had the air of 
 thinking that whatever interest he might take in the matter 
 from the point of view of sociability, he had no active voice 
 in it. "Well, I told you you would be a success over here. 
 Americans are highly appreciated." 
 
 "Very highly indeed," said Isabel. "But at the cost of 
 seeming ungrateful, I don't think I can marry Lord Warburton." 
 
 "Well," her uncle went on, "of course an old man can't 
 judge for a young lady. I am glad you didn't ask me before 
 you made up your mind. I suppose I ought to tell you," he 
 added slowly, but as if it were not of much consequence, " that 
 I have known all about it these three days." 
 
 " About Lord Warburton's state of mind 1 " 
 
 " About his indentions, as they say here. He wrote me a very 
 pleasant letter, telling me all about them. Should you like to 
 see it 1 " the old man asked, obligingly. 
 
 "Thank you; I don't think I care about that. But I am 
 glad he wrote to you ; it was right that he should, and he would 
 be certain to do what was right." 
 
 " Ah, well, I guess you do like him ! " Mr. Touchett declared. 
 " You needn't pretend you don't." 
 
 u I like him extremely ; I am very free to admit that. But I 
 don't wish to marry any one just now." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 145 
 
 " You think some one may come along whom you may 
 like better. Well, that's very likely," said Mr. Touchett, who 
 appeared to wish to show his kindness to the girl by easing off 
 her decision, as it were, and finding cheerful reasons for it. 
 
 "I don't care if I don't meet any one else; I like Lord 
 Warburton quite well enough," said Isabel, with that appearance 
 of a sudden change of point of view with which she sometimes 
 startled and even displeased her interlocutors. 
 
 Her uncle, however, seemed proof against either of these 
 sensations. 
 
 " He's a very fine man," he resumed, in a tone which might 
 have passed for that of encouragement. " His letter was one of 
 the plaasantest letters I have received in some weeks. I suppose 
 one of the reasons I liked it was that it was all about you ; that 
 is, all except the part which was about himself. I suppose he 
 told you all that." 
 
 " He would have told me everything I wished to ask him," 
 Isabel said. 
 
 " But you didn't feel curious 1 " 
 
 " My curiosity would have been idle once I had determined 
 to decline his offer."' 
 
 "You didn't find it sufficiently attractive?" Mr. Touchett 
 inquired. 
 
 The girl was silent a moment. 
 
 " I suppose it was that," she presently admitted. " But I 
 don't know why." 
 
 " Fortunately, ladies are not obliged to give reasons," said her 
 uncle. "There's a great deal that's attractive about such an 
 idea ; but I don't see why the English should want to entice us 
 away from our native land. I know that we try to attract them 
 
 over there ; but that's because our population is insufficient. 
 VOL. i. L 
 
146 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 Here, you know, they are rather crowded. However, I suppose 
 there is room for charming young ladies everywhere." 
 
 " There seems to have been room here for you," said Isabel, 
 whose eyes had been wandering over the large pleasure-spaces of 
 the park. 
 
 Mr. Touchett gave a shrewd, conscious smile. 
 
 " There is room everywhere, my dear, if you will pay for it. 
 I sometimes think I have paid too much for this. Perhaps you 
 also might have to pay too much." 
 
 " Perhaps I might," the girl replied. 
 
 This suggestion gave her something more definite to rest upon 
 than she had found in her own thoughts, and the fact of her 
 uncle's genial shrewdness being associated with her dilemma 
 seemed to prove to her that she was concerned with the natural 
 and reasonable emotions of life, and not altogether a victim to 
 intellectual eagerness and vague ambitions ambitions reaching 
 beyond Lord Warburton's handsome offer to something inde- 
 finable and possibly not commendable. Tn so far as the 
 indefinable had an influence upon Isabel's behaviour at this 
 juncture, it was not the conception, however unformulated, of 
 a union with Caspar Goodwood ; for however little she might 
 have felt warranted in lending a receptive ear to her English 
 suitor, she was at least as far removed from the disposition to 
 let the young man from Boston take complete possession of her. 
 The sentiment in which she ultimately took refuge, after reading 
 his letter, was a critical view of his having come abroad ; for 
 it was part of the influence he had upon her that he seemed 
 to take from her the sense of freedom. There was something 
 too forcible, something oppressive and restrictive, in the manner 
 in which he presented himself. She had been haunted at 
 moments by the image of his disapproval, and she had wondered 
 
THE PORTKAIT OF A LADY. 147 
 
 a consideration she had never paid in one equal degree to any 
 one else whether he would like what she did. The difficulty 
 was that more than any man she had ever known, more than 
 poor Lord Warburton (she had begun now to give his lordship 
 the benefit of this epithet), Caspar Goodwood gave her an 
 impression of energy. She might like it or not, but at any 
 rate there was something very strong about him ; even in one's 
 usual contact with him one had to reckon with it. The idea of 
 a diminished liberty was particularly disagreeable to Isabel at 
 present, because it seemed to her that she had just given a sort 
 of personal accent to her independence by making up her mind 
 to refuse Lord Warburton. Sometimes Caspar Goodwood had 
 seemed to range himself on the side of her destiny, to be the 
 stubbornest fact she knew ; she said to herself at such moments 
 that she might evade him for a time, but that she must make 
 terms with him at last terms which would be certain to be 
 favourable to himself. Her impulse had been to avail herself of 
 the things that helped her to resist such an obligation ; and this 
 impulse had been much concerned in her eager acceptance of her 
 aunt's invitation, which had come to her at a time when she 
 expected from day to day to see Mr. Goodwood, and when she 
 was glad to have an answer ready for something she was sure he 
 would say to her. When she had told him at Albany, on the 
 evening of Mrs. Touchett's visit, that she could not now discuss 
 difficult questions, because she was preoccupied with the idea of 
 going to Europe with her aunt, he declared that this was no 
 answer at all ; and it was to obtain a better one that he followed 
 her across the seas. To say to herself that he was a kind of 
 fate was well enough for a fanciful young woman, who was able 
 to take much for granted in him ; but the reader has a right to 
 
 demand a description less metaphysical. 
 
 L 2 
 
148 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 He was the son of a proprietor of certain well-known cotton- 
 mills in Massachusetts a gentleman who had accumulated a 
 considerable fortune in the exercise of this industry. Caspar 
 now managed the establishment, with a judgment and a brilliancy 
 which, in spite of keen competition and languid years, had kept 
 its prosperity from dwindling. He had received the better part 
 of his education at Harvard University, where, however, he had 
 gained more renown as a gymnast and an oarsman than as a 
 votary of culture. Later, he had become reconciled to culture, 
 and though he was still fond of sport, he was capable of showing 
 an excellent understanding of other matters. He had a remark- 
 able aptitude for mechanics, and had invented an improvement 
 in the cotton-spinning process, which was now largely used and 
 was known by his name. You might have seen his name in 
 the papers in connection with this fruitful contrivance ; assur- 
 ance of which he had given to Isabel by showing her in the 
 columns of the New York Interviewer an exhaustive article on 
 the Goodwood patent an article not prepared by Miss Stackpole, 
 friendly as she had proved herself to his more sentimental 
 interests. He had great talent for business, for administration, 
 and for making people execute his purpose and carry out his 
 views for managing men, as the phrase was ; and to give its 
 complete value to this faculty, he had an insatiable, an almost 
 fierce, ambition. It always struck people who knew him that 
 he might do greater things than carry on a cotton-factory ; there 
 was nothing cottony about Caspar Goodwood, and his friends 
 took for granted that he would not always content himself with 
 that. He had once said to Isabel that, if the United States 
 were only not such a confoundedly peaceful nation, he would 
 find his proper place in the army. He keenly regretted that 
 the Civil War should have terminated just as he had grown old 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 149 
 
 enough to wear shoulder-straps, and was sure that if something 
 of the same kind would only occur again, he would make a 
 display of striking military talent. It pleased Isabel to believe 
 that he had the qualities of a famous captain, and she answered 
 that, if it would help him on, she shouldn't object to a war 
 a speech which ranked-among the three or four most encouraging 
 ones he had elicited from her, and of which the value was not 
 diminished by her subsequent regret at having said anything so 
 heartless, inasmuch as she never communicated this regret to 
 him. She liked at any rate this idea of his being potentially a 
 commander of men liked it much better than some other points 
 in his character and appearance. She cared nothing about his 
 cotton-mill, and the Goodwood patent left her imagination 
 absolutely cold. She wished him not an inch less a man than 
 he was ; but she sometimes thought he would be rather nicer if 
 he looked, for instance, a little differently. His jaw was too 
 square and grim, and his figure too straight and stiff; these 
 things suggested a want of easy adaptability to some of the 
 occasions of life. Then she regarded with disfavour a habit he 
 had of dressing always in the same manner ; it was not appar- 
 ently that he wore the same clothes continually, for, on the 
 contrary, his garments had a way of looking rather too new. 
 But they all seemed to be made of the same piece ; the pattern, 
 the cut, was in every case identical. She had reminded herself 
 more than once that this was a frivolous objection to a man of 
 Mr. Goodwood's importance ; and then she had amended the 
 rebuke by saying that it would be a frivolous objection if she 
 were in love with him. She was not in love with him, and 
 therefore she might criticise bis small defects as well as his great 
 ones which latter consisted in the collective reproach of his 
 being too serious, or, rather, not of his being too serious, for one 
 
150 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 could never be that, but of his seeming so. He showed his 
 seriousness too simply, too artlessly ; when one was alone with 
 him he talked too much about the same subject, and when other 
 people were present he talked too little about anything. And 
 yet he was the strongest man she had ever known, and she 
 believed that at bottom he was the cleverest. It was very 
 strange; she was far from understanding the contradictions 
 among her own impressions. Caspar Goodwood had never 
 corresponded to her idea of a delightful person, and she supposed 
 that this was why he was so unsatisfactory. When, however, 
 Lord Warburton, who not only did correspond with it, but gave 
 an extension to the term, appealed to her approval, she found 
 herself still unsatisfied. It was certainly strange. 
 
 Such incongruities were not a help to answering Mr. Good- 
 wood's letter, and Isabel determined to leave it a while unanswered. 
 If he had determined to persecute her, he must take the conse- 
 quences ; foremost among which was his being left to perceive 
 that she did not approve of his coming to Gardencourt. She 
 was already liable to the incursions of one suitor at this place, 
 and though it might be pleasant to be appreciated in opposite 
 quarters, Isabel had a personal shrinking from entertaining 
 two lovers at once, even in a case where the entertainment 
 should consist of dismissing them. She sent no answer to 
 Mr. Goodwood ; but at the end of three days she wrote to Lord 
 Warburton, and the letter belongs to our history. It ran as 
 follows. 
 
 " DEAR LORD WAHBURTON A great deal of careful reflection 
 has not led me to change my mind about the suggestion you 
 were so kind as to make me the other day. I do not find myself 
 able to regard you in the light of a husband, or to regard your 
 

 THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 151 
 
 home your various homes in the light of my own. These 
 things cannot be reasoned about, and I very earnestly entreat 
 you not to return to the subject we discussed so exhaustively. 
 We see our lives from our own point of view ; that is the privi- 
 lege of the weakest and humblest of us ; and I shall never be 
 able to see mine in the manner you proposed. Kindly let this 
 suffice you, and do me the justice to believe that I have given 
 your proposal the deeply respectful consideration it deserves. 
 It is with this feeling of respect that I remain very truly 
 yours, 
 
 " ISABEL ARCHER." 
 
 While the author of this missive was making up her mind to 
 despatch it, Henrietta Stackpole formed a resolution which was 
 accompanied by no hesitation. She invited Ealph Touchett to 
 take a walk with her in the garden, and when he had assented 
 with that alacrity which seemed constantly to testify to his high 
 expectations, she informed him that she had a favour to ask of 
 him. It may be confided to the reader that at this information 
 the young man flinched ; for we know that Miss Stackpole had 
 struck him as indiscreet. The movement was unreasonable, 
 however ; for he had measured the limits of her discretion as 
 little as he had explored its extent ; and he made a very civil 
 profession of the desire to serve her. He was afraid of her, and 
 he presently told her so. 
 
 " When you look at me in a certain way," he said, " my knees 
 knock together, my faculties desert me ; I am filled with trepid- 
 ation, and I ask only for strength to execute your commands. 
 You have a look which I have never encountered in any 
 woman." 
 
 " Well," Henrietta replied, good-humouredly, " if I had not 
 
152 THE PORTE AIT OF A LADY. 
 
 known before that you were trying to turn me into ridicule, I 
 should know it now. Of course I am easy game I was brought 
 up with such different customs and ideas. I am not used to 
 your arbitrary standards, and I have never been spoken to in 
 America as you have spoken to me. If a gentleman conversing 
 with me over there, were to speak to me like that, I shouldn't 
 know what to make of it. We take everything more naturally 
 over there, and, after all, we are a great deal more simple. 
 I admit that ; I am very simple myself. Of course, if you choose 
 to laugh at me for that, you are very welcome ; but I think 
 on the whole I would rather be myself than you. I am quite 
 content to be myself; I don't want to change. There are plenty 
 of people that appreciate me just as I am ; it is true they are 
 only Americans ! " Henrietta had lately taken up the tone of 
 helpless innocence and large concession. " I want you to assist 
 me a little," she went on. "I don't care in the least whether I 
 amuse you while you do so ; or, rather, I am perfectly willing 
 that your amusement should be your reward. I want you to 
 help me about Isabel." 
 
 " Has she injured you 1 " Kalph asked. 
 
 " If she had I shouldn't mind, and I should never tell you. 
 What I am afraid <?f is that she will injure herself." 
 
 " I think that is very possible," said Ealph. 
 
 His companion stopped in the garden- walk, fixing on him a 
 gaze which may perhaps have contained the quality that caused 
 his knees to knock together. " That, too, would amuse you, I 
 suppose. The way you do say things ! I never heard any one 
 so indifferent." 
 
 " To Isabel ? Never in the world." 
 
 "Well, you are not in love with her, I hope." 
 
 " How can that be, when I am in love with another ? " 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 153 
 
 " You are in love with yourself, that's the other ! " Miss 
 Stackpole declared. " Much good may it do you ! But if you 
 wish to be serious once in your life, here's a chance ; and if you 
 really care for your cousin, here is an opportunity to prove it. I 
 don't expect you to understand her ; that's too much to ask. 
 But you needn't do that to grant my favour. I will supply the 
 necessary intelligence." 
 
 " I shall enjoy that immensely ! " Ralph exclaimed. " I will 
 be Caliban, and you shall be Ariel." 
 
 " You are not at all like Caliban, because you are sophisti- 
 cated, and Caliban was not. But I am not talking about 
 imaginary characters ; I am talking about Isabel. Isabel is 
 intensely real. What I wish to tell you is that I find her 
 fearfully changed." 
 
 " Since you came, do you mean 1 " 
 
 " Since I came, and before I came. She is not the same as 
 she was." 
 
 " As she was in America 1 " 
 
 " Yes, in America. I suppose you know that she comes from 
 there. She can't help it, but she does." 
 
 " Do you want to change her back again 1 " 
 
 " Of course I do ; and I want you to help me." 
 
 " Ah," said Ealph, " I am only Caliban ; I am not Prospero." 
 
 " You were Prospero enough to make her what she has 
 become. You have acted on Isabel Archer since she came here, 
 Mr. Touchett." 
 
 " I, my dear Miss Stackpole 1 Never in the world. Isabel 
 Archer has acted on me yes ; she acts on every one. But I 
 have been absolutely passive." 
 
 " You are too passive, then. You had better stir yourself and 
 be careful. Isabel is changing every day ; she is drifting away 
 
154 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 right out to sea. I have watched her and I can see it. She is 
 not the bright American girl she was. She is taking different 
 views, and turning away from her old ideals. I want to save 
 those ideals, Mr. Touchett, and that is where you come in." 
 
 " Not surely as an ideal 1 " 
 
 "Well, I hope not," Henrietta replied, promptly. "I have 
 got a fear in my heart that she is going to marry one of these 
 Europeans, and I want to prevent it." 
 
 " Ah, I see," cried Ealph ; " and to prevent it, you want me 
 to step in and marry her ? " 
 
 " Not quite ; that remedy would be as bad as the disease, for 
 you are the typical European from whom I wish to rescue her. 
 No ; I wish you to take an interest in another person a young 
 man to whom she once gave great encouragement, and whom she 
 now doesn't seem to think good enough. He's a noble fellow, 
 and a very dear friend of mine, and I wish very much you 
 would invite him to pay a visit here." 
 
 Ralph was much puzzled by this appeal, and it is perhaps not 
 to the credit of his purity of mind that he failed to look at it at 
 first in the simplest light. It wore, to his eyes, a tortuous air, 
 and his fault was that he was not quite sure that anything in the 
 world could really be as candid as this request of Miss Stack- 
 pole's appeared. That a young woman should demand that a 
 gentleman whom she described as her very dear friend should 
 be furnished with an opportunity to make himself agreeable to 
 another young woman, whose attention had wandered and whose 
 charms were greater this was an anomaly which for the moment 
 challenged all his ingenuity of interpretation. To read between 
 the lines was easier than to follow the text, and to suppose that 
 Miss Stackpole wished the gentleman invited to Gardencourt on 
 her own account was the sign not so' much of a vulgar, as of an 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 155 
 
 embarrassed, mind. Even from this venial act of vulgarity, 
 however, Ralph was saved, and saved by a force that I can 
 scarcely call anything less than inspiration. "With no more out- 
 ward light on the subject than he already possessed, he suddenly 
 acquired the conviction that it would be a sovereign injustice to 
 the correspondent of the Interviewer to assign a dishonourable 
 motive to any act of hers. This conviction passed into his mind 
 with extreme rapidity; it was perhaps kindled by the pure 
 radiance of the young lady's imperturbable gaze. He returned 
 this gaze a moment, consciously, resisting an inclination to frown, 
 as one frowns in the presence of larger luminaries. " Who is 
 the gentleman you speak of? " 
 
 " Mr. Caspar Goodwood, from Boston. He has been extremely 
 attentive to Isabel just as devoted to her as he can live. He 
 has followed her out here, and he is at present in London. I 
 
 : 
 
 don't know his address, but I guess I can obtain it. 
 
 " I have never heard of him," said Ralph. 
 
 "Well, I suppose you haven't heard of every one. I don't 
 believe he has ever heard of you ; but that is no reason why 
 Isabel shouldn't marry him." 
 
 Ralph gave a small laugh. "What a rage you have for 
 marrying people ! Do you remember how you wanted to marry 
 me the other day 1 " 
 
 " I have got over that. You don't know how to take such 
 ideas. Mr. Goodwood does, however ; and that's what I like 
 about him. He's a splendid man and a perfect gentleman : and 
 Isabel knows it." 
 
 " Is she very fond of him 1 " 
 
 " If she isn't she ought to be. He is simply wrapped up in 
 her." 
 
 " And you wish me to ask him here," said Ralph, reflectively. 
 
156 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " It would be an act of true hospitality." 
 
 " Caspar Goodwood," Ealph continued " it's rather a striking 
 name." 
 
 " I don't care anything about his name. It might be Ezekiel 
 Jenkins, and I should say the same. He is the only man I have 
 ever seen whom I think worthy of Isabel." 
 
 " You are a very devoted friend," said Ealph. 
 
 " Of course I am. If you say that to laugh at me, I 
 don't care." 
 
 " I don't say it to laugh at you ; I am very much struck 
 with it." 
 
 " You are laughing worse than ever ; but I advise you not to 
 laugh at Mr. Goodwood." 
 
 " I assure you I am very serious ; you ought to understand 
 that," said Ealph. 
 
 In a moment his companion understood it. "I believe you 
 are ; now you are too serious." 
 
 " You are difficult to please." 
 
 " Oh, you are very serious indeed. You won't invite Mr. 
 Goodwood." 
 
 " I don't know," said Ealph. " I am capable of strange 
 things. Tell me* a little about Mr. Goodwood. What is he 
 like]" 
 
 " He is just the opposite of you. He is at the head of a 
 cotton factory ; a very fine one." 
 
 " Has he pleasant manners 1 " asked Ealph. 
 
 " Splendid manners in the American style." 
 
 " Would he be an agreeable member of our little circle 1 " 
 
 " I don't think he would care much about our little circle. 
 He would concentrate on Isabel." 
 
 " And how would my cousin like that 1 " 
 
THE PORTKAIT OF A LADY. 157 
 
 " Very possibly not at all. But it will be good for her. It 
 will call back her thoughts." 
 
 " Call them back from where 1 " 
 
 " From foreign parts and other unnatural places. Three 
 months ago she gave Mr. Goodwood every reason to suppose 
 that he was acceptable to her, and it is not worthy of Isabel to 
 turn her back upon a real friend simply because she has changed 
 the scene. I have changed the scene too, and the effect of it 
 has been to make me care more for my old associations than 
 ever. It's my belief that the sooner Isabel changes it back again 
 the better. I know her well enough to know that she would 
 never be truly happy over here, and I wish her to form some 
 strong American tie that will act as a preservative." 
 
 " Are you not a little too much in a hurry ? " Ralph inquired. 
 " Don't you think you ought to give her more of a chance in 
 poor old England ? " 
 
 " A chance to ruin her bright young life ? One is never too much 
 in a hurry to save a precious human creature from drowning." 
 
 "As I understand it, then," said Ralph, "you wish me to 
 push Mr. Goodwood overboard after her. Do you know," he 
 added, " that I have never heard her mention his name 1 " 
 
 Henrietta Stackpole gave a brilliant smile. " I am delighted 
 to hear that ; it proves how much she thinks of him." 
 
 Ralph appeared to admit that there was a good deal in this, 
 and he surrendered himself to meditation, while his companion 
 watched him askance. " If I should invite Mr. Goodwood," he 
 said, " it would be to quarrel with him." 
 
 " Don't do that ; he would prove the better man." 
 " You certainly are doing your best to make me hate him ! I 
 really don't think I can ask him. I should be afraid of being 
 rude to him." 
 
158 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " It's just as you please," said Henrietta. "I had no idea 
 you were in love with her yourself." 
 
 " Do you really believe that ? " the young man asked, with 
 lifted eyebrows. 
 
 " That's the most natural speech I have ever heard you make ! 
 Of course I believe it," Miss Stackpole answered, ingeniously. 
 
 " Well," said Ealph, " to prove to you that you are wrong, I 
 will invite him. It must be, of course, as a friend of yours." 
 
 " It will not be as a friend of mine that he will come ; and it 
 will not be to prove to me that I am wrong that you will ask 
 him but to prove it to yourself ! " 
 
 These last words of Miss Stackpole' s (on which the two pre- 
 sently separated) contained an amount of truth which Ealph 
 Touchett was obliged to recognise ; but it so far took the edge 
 from too sharp a recognition that, in spite of his suspecting that 
 it would be rather more indiscreet to keep his promise than it 
 would be to break it, he wrote Mr. Goodwood a note of six lines, 
 expressing the pleasure it would give Mr. Touchett the elder that 
 he should join a little party at Gardencourt, of which Miss 
 Stackpole was a valued member. Having sent his letter (to the 
 care of a banker whom Henrietta suggested) he waited in some 
 suspense. He had heard of Mr. Caspar Goodwood by name for 
 the first time ; for when his mother mentioned to him on her 
 arrival that there was a story about the girl's having an 
 " admirer " at home, the idea seemed deficient in reality, and 
 Kalph took no pains to ask questions, the answers to which 
 would suggest only the vague or the disagreeable. Now, how- 
 ever, the native admiration of which his cousin was the object 
 had become more concrete ; it took the form of a young man 
 who had followed her to London; who was interested in a 
 cotton-mill, and had manners in the 'American style. Ealph had 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 159 
 
 two theories about this young man. Either his passion was a 
 sentimental fiction of Miss Stackpole's (there was always, a sort 
 of tacit understanding among women, born of the solidarity of 
 the sex, that they should discover or invent lovers for each 
 other), in which case he was not to be feared, and would pro- 
 bably not accept the invitation ; or else he would accept the 
 invitation, and in this event would prove himself a creature too 
 irrational to demand further consideration. The latter clause of 
 Ralph's argument might have seemed incoherent ; but it em- 
 bodied his conviction, that if Mr. Goodwood were interested in 
 Isabel in the serious manner described by Miss Stackpole, he 
 would not care to present himself at Gardencourt on a summons 
 from the latter lady. " On this supposition," said Ralph, " he 
 must regard her as a thorn on the stem of his rose ; as an inter- 
 cessor he must find her wanting in tact." 
 
 Two days after he had sent his invitation he received a very 
 short note from Caspar Goodwood, thanking him for it, regret- 
 ting that other engagements made a visit to Gardencourt impos- 
 sible, and presenting many compliments to Miss Stackpole. 
 Ralph handed the note to Henrietta, who, when she had read it, 
 exclaimed 
 
 " Well, I never have heard of anything so stiff ! " 
 
 " I am afraid he doesn't care so much about my cousin as you 
 suppose," Ralph observed. 
 
 " No, it's not that ; it's some deeper motive. His nature is 
 very deep. But I am determined to fathom it, and I will write 
 to him to know what he means." 
 
 His refusal of Ralph's overtures made this young man vaguely 
 uncomfortable ; from the moment he declined to come to Garden- 
 court Ralph began to think him of importance. He asked him- 
 self what it signified to him whether Isabel's admirers should be 
 
160 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 desperadoes or laggards ; they were not rivals of his, and were 
 perfectly welcome to act out their genius. Nevertheless he felt 
 much curiosity as to the result of Miss Stackpole's promised 
 inquiry into the causes of Mr. Goodwood's stiffness a curiosity 
 for the present ungratifted, inasmuch as when he asked her 
 three days later whether she had written to London, she was 
 obliged to confess that she had written in vain. Mr. Goodwood 
 had not answered her. 
 
 "I suppose he is thinking it over," she said; "he thinks 
 everything over ; he is not at all impulsive. But I am accus- 
 tomed to having my letters answered the same day." 
 
 Whether it was to pursue her investigations, or whether it was 
 in compliance with still larger interests, is a point which remains 
 somewhat uncertain ; at all events, she presently proposed to 
 Isabel that they should make an excursion to London together. 
 
 " If I must tell the truth," she said, " I am not seeing much 
 at this place, and I shouldn't think you were either. I have not 
 even seen that aristocrat what's his name ? Lord Washburton. 
 He seems to let you severely alone." 
 
 " Lord Warburton is coming to-morrow, I happen to know," 
 replied Isabel, who had received a note from the master of Lock- 
 leigh in answer to her own letter. " You will have every 
 opportunity of examining him." 
 
 " Well, he may do for one letter, but what is one letter when 
 you want to write fifty 1 I have described all the scenery in this 
 vicinity, and raved about all the old women and donkeys. You 
 may say what you please, scenery makes a thin letter. I must 
 go back to London and get some impressions of real life. I was 
 there but three days before I came away, and that is hardly time 
 to get started." 
 
 As Isabel, on her journey from New York to Gardencourt, had 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 161 
 
 seen even less of the metropolis than this, it appeared a happy 
 suggestion of Henrietta's that the two should go thither on a 
 visit of pleasure. The idea struck Isabel as charming ; she had 
 a great desire to see something of London, which had always 
 been the city of her imagination. They turned over their scheme 
 together and indulged in visions of aesthetic hours. They would 
 stay at some picturesque old inn one of the inns described by 
 Dickens and drive over the town in those delightful hansoms. 
 Henrietta was a literary woman, and the great advantage of being 
 a literary woman was that you could go everywhere and do 
 everything. They would dine at a coffee-house, and go after- 
 wards to the play ; they would frequent the Abbey and the 
 British Museum, and find out where Doctor Johnson had 'lived, 
 and Goldsmith and Addison. Isabel grew eager, and presently 
 mentioned these bright intentions to Ralph, who burst into a 
 fit of laughter, which did not express the sympathy she had 
 desired. 
 
 " It's a delightful plan," he said. " I advise you to go to the 
 Tavistock Hotel in Covent Garden, an easy, informal, old- 
 fashioned place, and I will have you put down at my club." 
 
 "Do you mean it's improper?" Isabel asked. "Dear me, 
 isn't anything proper here 1 "With Henrietta, surely I may go 
 anywhere ; she isn't hampered in that way. She has travelled 
 over the whole American continent, and she can surely find her 
 way about this simple little island." 
 
 " Ah, then," said Ealph, " let me take advantage of her pro- 
 tection to go up to town as well. I may never have a chance to 
 travel so safely ! " 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
162 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Miss STACKPOLE would have prepared to start for London 
 immediately ; but Isabel, as we have seen, had been notified that 
 Lord Warburton would come again to Gardencourt, and she 
 believed it to be her duty to remain there and see him. For four 
 or five days he had made no answer to her letter ; then he had 
 written, very briefly, to say that he would come to lunch two 
 days later. There was something in these delays and postpone- 
 ments that touched the girl, and renewed her sense of his desire 
 to be considerate and patient, not to appear to urge her too 
 grossly ; a discretion the more striking that she was so sure he 
 really liked her. Isabel told her uncle that she had written to 
 him, and let Mr. Touchett know of Lord Warburton' s intention 
 of coming ; and tljte old man, in consequence, left his room earlier 
 than usual, and made his appearance at the lunch-table. This 
 was by no means an act of vigilance on his part, but the fruit of 
 a benevolent belief that his being of the company might help to 
 cover the visitor's temporary absence, in case Isabel should find 
 it needful to give Lord "Warburton another hearing. This per- 
 sonage drove over from Lockleigh, and brought the elder of his 
 sisters with him, a measure presumably dictated by considerations 
 of the same order as Mr. Touchett's. The two visitors were 
 introduced to Miss Stackpole, who, at luncheon, pccupied a seat 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 163 
 
 adjoining Lord Warburton's. Isabel, who was nervous, and had 
 no relish of the prospect of again arguing the question he had so 
 precipitately opened, could not help admiring his good-humoured 
 self-possession, which quite disguised the symptoms of that 
 admiration it was natural she should suppose him to feel. He 
 neither looked at her nor spoke to her, and the only sign of his 
 emotion was that he avoided meeting her eye. He had plenty 
 of talk for the others, however, and he appeared to eat his 
 luncheon with discrimination and appetite. Miss Molyneux, 
 who had a smooth, nun-like forehead, and wore a large silver 
 cross suspended from her neck, was evidently preoccupied with 
 Henrietta Stackpole, upon whom her eyes constantly rested in a 
 manner which seemed to denote a conflict between attention and 
 alienation. Of the two ladies from Lockleigh, she was the one 
 that Isabel had liked best ; there was such a world of hereditary 
 quiet in her. Isabel was sure, moreover, that her mild forehead 
 and .-silver cross had a romantic meaning that she was a mem- 
 ber of a High Church sisterhood, had taken some picturesque 
 vows. She wondered what Miss Molyneux would think of her 
 if she knew Miss Archer had refused her brother ; and then she 
 felt sure that Miss Molyneux would never know that Lord 
 Warburton never told her such things. He was fond of her and 
 kind to her, but on the whole he told her little. Such, at least, 
 was Isabel's theory ; when, at table, she was* not occupied in 
 conversation, she was usually occupied in forming theories about 
 her neighbours. According to Isabel, if Miss Molyneux should 
 ever learn what had passed between Miss Archer and Lord 
 Warburton, she would probably be shocked at the young lady's 
 indifference to such an opportunity ; or no, rather (this was 
 our heroine's last impression) she would impute to the young 
 
 American a high sense of general fitness. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 Whatever Isabel might have made of her opportunities, 
 Henrietta Stackpole was by no means disposed to neglect those 
 in which she now found herself immersed. 
 
 "Do you know you are the first lord I have ever seen?" she 
 said, very promptly, to her neighbour. " I suppose you think I 
 am awfully benighted." 
 
 " You have escaped seeing some very ugly men," Lord 
 "Warburton answered, looking vaguely about the table and 
 laughing a little. 
 
 " Are they very ugly 1 They try to make us believe in 
 America that they are all handsome and magnificent, and that 
 they wear wonderful robes and crowns." 
 
 " Ah, the robes and crowns have gone out of fashion," said 
 Lord "Warburton, " like your tomahawks and revolvers." 
 
 "I am sorry for that; I think an aristocracy ought to be 
 splendid," Henrietta declared. "If it is not that, what is 
 it?" 
 
 " Oh, you know, it isn't much, at the best," Lord Warburton 
 answered. " Won't you have a potato ? " 
 
 " I don't care much for these European potatoes. I shouldn't 
 know you from an ordinary American gentleman." 
 
 " Do talk to me as if I were one," said Lord Warburton. 
 " I don't see how you manage to get on without potatoes ; you 
 must find so few things to eat over here." 
 
 Henrietta was silent a moment ; there was a chance that he 
 was not sincere. 
 
 " I have had hardly any appetite since I have been here," she 
 went on at last ; " so it doesn't much matter. I don't approve 
 of you, you know ; I feel as if I ought to tell you that." 
 
 " Don't approve of me 1 " 
 
 " Yes, I don't suppose any one ever said such a thing to you 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 165 
 
 before, did they? I don't approve of lords, as an institution. 
 I think the world has got beyond that far beyond." 
 
 " Oh, so do I. I don't approve of myself in the least. 
 Sometimes it comes over me how I should object to myself if 
 I were not myself, don't you know 1 But that's rather good, by 
 the way not to be vainglorious." 
 
 "Why don't you give it up, then?" Miss Stackpole inquired. 
 
 "Give up a ?" asked Lord "Warburton, meeting her harsh 
 inflection with a very mellow one. 
 
 "Give up being a lord." 
 
 " Oh, I am so little of one ! One would really forget all 
 about it, if you wretched Americans were not constantly remind- 
 ing one. However, I do think of giving up the little there is 
 left of it one of these days." 
 
 " I should like to see you do it," Henrietta exclaimed, rather 
 grimly. 
 
 " I will invite you to the ceremony ; we will have a supper 
 and a dance." 
 
 " Well," said Miss Stackpole, " I like to see all sides. I 
 don't approve of a privileged class, but I like to hear what they 
 have got to say for themselves." 
 
 " Mighty little, as you see ! " 
 
 " I should like to draw you out a little more," Henrietta 
 continued. " But you are always looking away. You are 
 afraid of meeting my eye. I see you want to escape me." 
 
 " No, I am only looking for those despised potatoes." 
 
 " Please explain about that young lady your sister then. 
 I don't understand about her. Is she a Lady ? " 
 
 " She's a capital good girl." 
 
 "I don't like the way you say that as if you wanted to 
 change the subject. Is her position inferior to yours 1 " 
 
166 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " We neither of us have any position to speak of ; but she is 
 better off than I, because she has none of the bother." 
 
 "Yes, she doesn't look as if she had much bother. I wish I 
 had as little bother as that. You do produce quiet people 
 over here, whatever you may do." 
 
 " Ah, you see one takes life easily, on the whole," said Lord 
 Warburton. " And then you know we are very dull. Ah, we 
 can be dull when we try ! " 
 
 "I should advise you to try something else. I shouldn't 
 know what to talk to your sister about ; she looks so different. 
 Is that silver cross a badge ? " 
 
 "A badge?" 
 
 " A sign of rank." 
 
 Lord Warburton' s glance had wandered a good deal, but at 
 this it met the gaze of his neighbour. 
 
 " Oh, yes," he answered, in a moment ; " the women go in 
 for those things. The silver cross is worn by the eldest 
 daughters of Viscounts." 
 
 This was his harmless revenge for having occasionally had 
 his credulity too easily engaged in America. 
 
 After lunch he proposed to Isabel to come into the gallery 
 and look at the pictures ; and though she knew that he had 
 seen the pictures twenty times, she complied without criticising 
 this pretext. Her conscience now was very easy ; ever since 
 she sent him her letter she had felt particularly light of spirit. 
 He walked slowly to the end of the gallery, staring at the 
 paintings and saying nothing ; and then he suddenly broke 
 out 
 
 " I hoped you wouldn't write to me that way." 
 
 " It was the only way, Lord Warburton," said the girl. " Do 
 try and believe that." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 167 
 
 " If I could believe it, of course I should let you alone. But 
 we can't believe by willing it; and I confess I don't understand. 
 I could understand your disliking me ; that I could understand 
 well. But that you should admit what you do " 
 
 " What have I ^admitted 1 " Isabel interrupted, blushing a 
 little. 
 
 " That you think me a good fellow ; isn't that it 1 " She 
 said nothing, and he went on " You don't seem to have any 
 reason, and that gives me a sense of injustice." 
 
 " I have a reason, Lord Warburton," said the girl ; and she 
 said it in a tone that made his heart contract. 
 
 "I should like very much to know it." 
 
 " I will tell you some day when there is more to show for it." 
 
 " Excuse my saying that in the meantime I must doubt of 
 it." 
 
 " You make me very unhappy," said Isabel. 
 
 " I am not sorry for that ; it may help you to know how I 
 feel. Will you kindly answer me a question ? " Isabel made 
 no audible assent, but he apparently saw something in her eyes 
 which gave him courage to go on. " Do you prefer some one 
 else?" 
 
 "That's a question I would rather not answer." 
 
 " Ah, you do then ! " her suitor murmured with bitterness. 
 
 The bitterness touched her, and she cried out 
 
 " You are mistaken ! I don't." 
 
 He sat down on a bench, unceremoniously, doggedly, like a 
 man in trouble ; leaning his elbows on his knees and staring 
 at the floor. 
 
 "I can't even be glad of that," he said at last, throwing 
 himself back against the wall, " for that would be an excuse." 
 
 Isabel raised her eyebrows, with a certain eagerness. 
 
168 THE PORTBAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " An excuse 1 Must I excuse myself 1 " 
 
 He paid, however, no answer to the question. Another idea 
 had come into his head. 
 
 " Is it my political opinions ? Do you think I go too 
 far?" 
 
 " I can't object to your political opinions, Lord Warburton," 
 said the girl, " because I don't understand them." 
 
 " You don't care what I think," he cried, getting up. " It's 
 all the same to you." 
 
 Isabel walked away, to the other side of the gallery, and 
 stood there, showing him her charming back, her light slim 
 figure, the length of her white neck as she bent her head, and 
 the density of her dark braids. She stopped in front of a small 
 picture, as if for the purpose of examining it ; and there was 
 something young and flexible in her movement, which her 
 companion noticed. Isabel's eyes, however, saw nothing; they 
 had suddenly been suffused with tears. In a moment he fol- 
 lowed her, and by this time she had brushed her tears away ; 
 hut when she turned round, her face was pale, and the expression 
 of her eyes was strange. 
 
 " That reason that I wouldn't tell you," she said, " I will tell 
 it you, after all. It is that I can't escape my fate." 
 
 "Your fate T' 
 
 " I should try to escape it if I should marry you." 
 
 " I don't understand. Why should not that be your fate, as 
 well as anything else ? " 
 
 " Because it is not," said Isabel, femininely. " I know it is 
 not. It's not my fate to give up I know it can't be." 
 
 Poor Lord Warburton stared, with an interrogative point in 
 either eye. 
 
 " Do you call marrying me giving up 1 " 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 169 
 
 " Not in the usual sense. It is getting getting getting a 
 great deal. But it is giving up other chances." 
 
 Other chances ? " Lord Warburton repeated, more and more 
 puzzled. 
 
 " I don't mean chances to marry," said Isabel, her colour 
 rapidly coming back to her. And then she stooped down with 
 a deep frown, as if it were hopeless to attempt to make her 
 meaning clear. 
 
 " I don't think it is presumptuous in me to say that I think 
 you will gain more than you will lose," Lord Warburton 
 observed. 
 
 " I can't escape unhappiness," said Isabel. " In marrying 
 you, I shall be trying to." 
 
 " I don't know whether you would try to, but you certainly 
 would : that I must in candour admit ! " Lord Warburton 
 exclaimed, with an anxious laugh. 
 
 " I must not I can't ! " cried the girl. 
 
 " Well, if you are bent on being miserable, I don't see why 
 you should make me so. Whatever charms unhappiness may 
 have for you, it has none for me." 
 
 " I am not bent on being miserable," said Isabel. " I have 
 always been intensely determined to be happy, and I have often 
 believed I should be. I have told people that ; you can ask 
 them. But it comes over me every now and then that I can 
 never be happy in any extraordinary way ; not by turning 
 away, by separating myself." 
 
 " By separating yourself from what 1 " 
 
 " From. life. From the usual chances and dangers, from what 
 most people know and suffer." 
 
 Lord Warburton broke into a smile that almost denoted hope. 
 
 " Why, my dear Miss Archer," he began to explain, with the 
 
170 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 most considerate eagerness, " I don't offer you any exoneration 
 from life, or from any chances or dangers whatever. I wish I 
 could; depend upon it I would ! For what do you take me, pray t 
 Heaven help me, I am not the Emperor of China ! All I offer 
 you is the chance of taking the common lot in a comfortable sort 
 of way. The common lot 1 Why, I am devoted to the common 
 lot ! Strike an alliance with me, and I promise you that you 
 shall have plenty of it. You shall separate from nothing what- 
 ever not even from your friend Miss Stackpole." 
 
 " She would never approve of it," said Isabel, trying to smile 
 and take advantage of this side-issue ; despising herself too, not 
 a little, for doing so. 
 
 "Are we speaking of Miss Stackpole?" Lord Warburton 
 asked, impatiently. " I never saw a person judge things on 
 such theoretic grounds." 
 
 " Now I suppose you are speaking of me," said Isabel, with 
 humility; and she turned away again, for she saw Miss 
 Molyneux enter the gallery, accompanied by Henrietta and 
 by Ealph. 
 
 Lord Warburton' s sister addressed him with a certain timidity, 
 and reminded him that she ought to return home in time for tea, 
 as she was expecting some company. He made no answer 
 apparently not having heard her; he was preoccupied- with 
 good reason. Miss Molyneux looked lady-like and patient, and 
 awaited his pleasure. 
 
 " Well, I never, Miss Molyneux ! " said Henrietta Stackpole. 
 " If I wanted to go, he would have to go. If I wanted my 
 brother to do a thing, he would have to do it." 
 
 " Oh, Warburton does everything one wants," Miss Molyneux 
 answered, with a quick, shy laugh. " How very many pictures 
 you have ! " she went on, turning to' Ralph. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 171 
 
 " They look a good many, because they are all put together," 
 said Ralph. " But it's really a bad way." 
 
 " Oh, I think it's so nice. I wish we had a gallery at Lock- 
 leigh. I am so very fond of pictures," Miss Molyneux went on, 
 persistently, to Ralph, as if she were afraid that Miss Stackpole 
 would address her again. Henrietta appeared at once to fascinate 
 and to frighten her. 
 
 " Oh yes, pictures are very indispensable," said Ralph, who 
 appeared to know better what style of reflection was acceptable 
 to her. 
 
 " They are so very pleasant when it rains," the young lady 
 continued. " It rains so very often." 
 
 "I am sorry you are going away, Lord Warburton," said 
 Henrietta. " I wanted to get a great deal more out of you." 
 
 " I am not going away," Lord Warburton answered. 
 
 " Your sister says you must. In America the gentlemen obey 
 the ladies." 
 
 " I am afraid we have got some people to tea," said Miss 
 Molyneux, looking at her brother. 
 
 " Very good, my dear. We'll go." 
 
 " I hoped you would resist ! " Henrietta exclaimed. " I 
 wanted to see what Miss Molyneux would do." 
 
 " I never do anything," said this young lady. 
 
 " I suppose in your position it's sufficient for you to exist ! " 
 Miss Stackpole rejoined. " I should like very much to see you 
 at home." 
 
 " You must come to Lockleigh again," said Miss Molyneux, 
 very sweetly, to Isabel, ignoring this remark of Isabel's friend. 
 
 Isabel looked into her quiet eyes a moment, and for that 
 moment seemed to see in their grey depths the reflection of 
 everything she had rejected in rejecting Lord Warburton the 
 
172 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 peace, the kindness, the honour, the possessions, a deep security 
 and a great exclusion. She kissed Miss Molyneux, and then 
 she said 
 
 " I am afraid I can never come again." 
 
 " Never again 1 " 
 
 " I am afraid I am going away." 
 
 " Oh, I am so very sorry," said Miss Molyneux. " I think 
 that's so very wrong of you." 
 
 Lord Warburton watched this little passage ; then he turned 
 away and stared at a picture. Ralph, leaning against the rail 
 before the picture, with his hands in his pockets, had for the 
 moment been watching him. 
 
 " I should like to see you at home," said Henrietta, whom 
 Lord Warburton found beside him. " I should like an hour's 
 talk with you ; there are a great many questions I wish to ask 
 you." 
 
 " I shall be delighted to see you," the proprietor of Lockleigh 
 answered ; " but I am certain not to be able to answer many of 
 your questions. When will you come 1 " 
 
 "Whenever Miss Archer will take 'me. We are thinking of 
 going to London, but we will go and see you first. I am 
 determined to getsome satisfaction out of you." 
 
 "If it depends upon Miss Archer, I am afraid you won't get 
 much. She will not come to Lockleigh ; she doesn't like the place." 
 
 " She told me it was lovely ! " said Henrietta. 
 
 Lord Warburton hesitated a moment. 
 
 " She won't come, all the same. You had better come alone," 
 he added. 
 
 Henrietta straightened herself, and her large eyes expanded. 
 
 "Would you make that remark to an English lady?" she 
 inquired, with soft asperity. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 173 
 
 Lord Warburton stared. 
 
 " Yes, if I liked her enough." 
 
 "You would be careful not to like her enough. If Miss 
 Archer won't visit your place again, it's because she doesn't 
 want to take me. I know what she thinks of me, and I 
 suppose you think the same that I oughtn't to bring in 
 individuals." 
 
 Lord Warburton was at a loss ; he had not been made 
 acquainted with Miss Stackpole's professional character, and did 
 not catch her allusion. 
 
 " Miss Archer has been warning you ! " she went on. 
 
 "Warning me?" 
 
 " Isn't that why she came off alone with you here to put 
 you on your guard 1 " 
 
 " Oh, dear no," said Lord Warburton, blushing ; " our talk 
 had no such solemn character as that." 
 
 " Well, you have been on your guard intensely. I suppose 
 it's natural to you ; that's just what I wanted to observe. And 
 so, too, Miss Molyneux she wouldn't commit herself. You 
 have been warned, anyway," Henrietta continued, addressing 
 this young lady, " but for you it wasn't necessary." 
 
 " I hope not," said Miss Molyneux, vaguely. 
 
 " Miss Stackpole takes notes," Ralph explained, humorously. 
 " She is a great satirist ; she sees through us all, and she works 
 us up." 
 
 " Well, I must say I never have had such a collection of bad 
 material ! " Henrietta declared, looking from Isabel to Lord 
 Warburton, and from this nobleman to his sister and to Ealph. 
 " There is something the matter with you all ; you are as dismal 
 as if you had got a bad telegram." 
 
 " You do see through us, Miss Stackpole," said Ealph in a 
 
174 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 low tone, giving her a little intelligent nod, as lie led the 
 party out of the gallery. " There is something the matter with 
 us all." 
 
 Isabel came behind these two; Miss Molyneux, who decidedly 
 liked her immensely, had taken her arm, to walk beside her 
 over the polished floor. Lord Warburton strolled on the other 
 side, with his hands behind him, and his eyes lowered. For 
 some moments he said nothing ; and then 
 
 "Is it true that you are going to London 1 " he asked. 
 
 " I believe it has been arranged." 
 
 " And when shall you come back 1 " 
 
 " In a few days ; but probably for a very short time. I am 
 going to Paris with my aunt." 
 
 " When, then, shall I see you again 1 " 
 
 " Not for a good while," said Isabel ; " but some day or 
 other, I hope." 
 
 " Do you really hope it 1 " 
 
 "Very much." 
 
 He went a few steps in silence ; then he stopped, and put 
 out his hand. 
 
 " Good-bye," 
 
 " Good-bye," said Isabel. 
 
 Miss Molyneux kissed her again, and she let the two depart ; 
 after which, without rejoining Henrietta and Ealph, she re- 
 treated to her own room. 
 
 In this apartment, before dinner, she was found by Mrs. 
 Touchett, who had stopped on her way to the drawing- 
 room. 
 
 " I may as well tell you," said her aunt, " that your uncle has 
 informed me of your relations with Lord Warburton." 
 
 Isabel hesitated an instant. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 175 
 
 " Eolations 1 They are hardly relations. That is the strange 
 part of it ; he has seen me but three or four times." 
 
 "Why did you tell your uncle rather than me?" Mrs. 
 Touchett inquired, dryly, but dispassionately. 
 
 Again Isabel hesitated. 
 
 " Because he knows Lord Warburton better." 
 
 " Yes, but I know you better." 
 
 " I am not sure of that," said Isabel, smiling. 
 
 " Neither am I, after all ; especially when you smile that 
 way. One would think you had carried off a prize ! I suppose 
 that when you refuse an offer like Lord Warburton's it's 
 because you expect to do something better." 
 
 "Ah, my uncle didn't say that !" cried Isabel, smiling still. 
 
176 THE PORTRAIT 1 OF A LADY. 
 
 XY. 
 
 IT had been arranged that the two young ladies should proceed 
 to London under Kalph's escort, though Mrs. Touchett looked 
 with little favour upon the plan. It was just the sort of plan, 
 she said, that Miss Stackpole would be sure to suggest, and she 
 inquired if the correspondent of the Interviewer was to take the 
 party to stay at a boarding-house. 
 
 " I don't care where she takes us to stay, so long as there is 
 local colour," said Isabel. " That is what we are going to 
 London for. " 
 
 " I suppose that after a girl has refused an English lord she 
 may do anything," her aunt rejoined. " After that one needn't 
 stand on trifles." 
 
 " Should you have liked me to marry Lord Warburton 1 " 
 Isabel inquired. 
 
 " Of course I should." 
 
 " I thought you disliked the English so much." 
 
 " So I do ; but it's all the more reason for making use of 
 them." 
 
 " Is that your idea of marriage ? " And Isabel ventured to 
 add that her aunt appeared to her to have made very little use 
 of Mr. Touchett. 
 
 " Your uncle is not an English nobleman," said Mrs. Touchett, 
 
THE POETEAIT OF A LADY. 177 
 
 " though even if he had been, I should still probably have taken 
 up my residence in Florence." 
 
 " Do you think Lord Warburton could make me any better 
 than I am?" the girl asked, with some animation. "I 
 don't mean that I am too good to improve. I mean I 
 mean that I don't love Lord Warburton enough to marry 
 him." 
 
 "You did right to refuse him, then," said Mrs. Touch ett, in 
 her little spare voice. " Only, the next great offer you get, I 
 hope you will manage to come up to your standard." 
 
 "We had better wait till the offer comes, before we talk 
 about it. I hope very much that I may have no more offers for 
 the present. They bother me fearfully." 
 
 " You probably won't be troubled with them if you adopt 
 permanently the Bohemian manner of life. However, I have 
 promised Ealph not to criticise the affair." 
 
 "I will do whatever Ralph says is right," Isabel said. "I 
 have unbounded confidence in Ealph." 
 
 "His mother is much obliged to you ! " cried this lady, with 
 a laugh. 
 
 " It seems to me she ought to be," Isabel rejoined, smiling. 
 
 Ralph had assured her that there would be no violation of 
 decency in their paying a visit the little party of three to the 
 sights of the metropolis ; but Mrs. Touchett took a different 
 view. Like many ladies of her country who have lived a long 
 time in Europe, she had completely lost her native tact on such 
 points, and in her reaction, not in itself deplorable, against 
 the liberty allowed to young persons beyond the seas, had fallen 
 into gratuitous and exaggerated scruples. Ralph accompanied 
 the two young ladies to town and established them at a quiet 
 inn in a street that ran at right angles to Piccadilly. His first 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
178 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 idea had been to take them to his father's house in Winchester 
 Square, a large, dull mansion, which at this period of the year 
 was shrouded in silence and brown holland ; but he bethought 
 himself that, the cook being at Gardencourt, there was no one 
 in the house to get them their meals ; and Pratt' s Hotel accord- 
 ingly became their resting-place. Ralph, on his side, found 
 quarters in Winchester Square, having a " den " there of which 
 he was very fond, and not being dependent on the local cuisine. 
 He availed himself largely indeed of that of Pratt's Hotel, 
 beginning his day with an early visit to his fellow-travellers, 
 who had Mr. Pratt in person, in a large bulging white waistcoat, 
 to remove their dish-covers. Ralph turned up, as he said, after 
 breakfast, and the little party made out a scheme of entertain- 
 ment for the day. As London does not wear in the month 
 of September its most brilliant face, the young man, who 
 occasionally took an apologetic tone, was obliged to remind his 
 companion, to Miss Stackpole's high irritation, that there was 
 not a creature in town. 
 
 "I suppose you mean that the aristocracy are absent," Hen- 
 rietta answered ; " but I don't think you could have a better 
 proof that if they were absent altogether they would not be 
 
 missed. It seems to me the place is about as full as it can be. 
 
 i 
 There is no one here, of course, except three or four millions of 
 
 people. What is it you call them the lower-middle class 1 
 They are only the population of London, and that is of no 
 consequence." 
 
 Ealph declared that for him the aristocracy left no void that 
 Miss Stackpole herself did not fill, and that a more contented 
 man was nowhere at that moment to be found. In this he 
 spoke the truth, for the stale September days, in the huge half- 
 empty town, borrowed a charm from his circumstances. When 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 he went home at night to the empty house in Winchester Square, 
 after a day spent with his inquisitive countrywomen, he wandered 
 into the big dusky dining-room, where the candle he took from 
 the hall-table, after letting himself in, constituted the only 
 illumination. The square was still, the house was still ; when 
 he raised one of the windows of the dining-room to let in the 
 air, he heard the slow creak of the boots of a solitary policeman. 
 His own step, in the empty room, seemed loud and sonorous ; 
 some of the carpets had been raised, and whenever he moved he 
 roused a melancholy echo. He sat down in one of the arm- 
 chairs ; the big, dark, dining table twinkled here and there in 
 the small candle-light ; the pictures on the wall, all of them 
 very brown, looked vague and incoherent. There was a ghostly 
 presence in the room, as of dinners long since digested, of table- 
 talk that had lost its actuality. This hint of the supernatural 
 perhaps had something to do with the fact that Ealph's imagin- 
 ation took a flight, and that he remained in his chair a long time 
 beyond the hour at which he should have been in bed ; doing 
 nothing, not even reading the evening paper. I say he did 
 nothing, and I maintain the phrase in the face of the fact that 
 he thought at these moments of Isabel. To think of Isabel 
 could only be for Ralph an idle pursuit, leading to nothing and 
 profiting little to any one. His cousin had not yet seemed to 
 him so charming as during these days spent in sounding, tourist- 
 fashion, the deeps and shallows of the metropolitan element. 
 Isabel was constantly interested and often excited ; if she had 
 come in search of local colour she found it everywhere. She 
 asked more questions than he could answer, and launched little 
 theories that he was equally unable to accept or to refute. The 
 party went more than once to the British Museum, and to that 
 brighter palace of art which reclaims for antique variety so large 
 
 N 2 
 
180 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 an area of a monotonous suburb ; they spent a morning in the 
 Abbey and went on a penny-steamer to the Tower ; they looked 
 at pictures both in public and private collections, and sat on 
 various occasions beneath the great trees in Kensington Gardens. 
 Henrietta Stackpole proved to be an indefatigable sight-seer and 
 a more good-natured critic than Ealph had ventured to hope. 
 She had indeed many disappointments, and London at large 
 suffered from her vivid remembrance of many of the cities of 
 her native land j but she made the best of its dingy peculiarities 
 and only heaved an occasional sigh, and uttered a desultory 
 " Well ! " which led no further and lost itself in retrospect. 
 The 'truth was that, as she said herself, she was not in her 
 element. " I have not a sympathy with inanimate objects," she 
 remarked to Isabel at the National Gallery ; and she continued 
 to suffer from the meagreness of the glimpse that had as yet been 
 vouchsafed to her of the inner life. Landscapes by Turner and 
 Assyrian bulls were a poor substitute for the literary dinner- 
 parties at which she had hoped to meet the genius and renown 
 of Great Britain. 
 
 " Where are your public men, where are your men and women 
 of intellect 1 " she inquired of Ealph, standing in the middle of 
 Trafalgar Square, as if she had supposed this to be a place where 
 she would naturally meet a few. " That's one of them on the 
 top of the column, you say Lord Nelson 1 Was he a lord too 1 
 Wasn't he high enough, that they had to stick him a hundred 
 feet in the air ? That's the past I don't care about the past ; 
 I want to see some of the leading minds of the present. I won't 
 say of the future, because I don't believe much in your future." 
 Poor Ealph had few leading minds among his acquaintance, and 
 rarely enjoyed the pleasure of button-holding a celebrity ; a 
 state of things which appeared to Miss Stackpole to indicate a 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 181 
 
 deplorable want of enterprise. " If I were on the other side I 
 should call," she said, "and tell the gentleman, whoever he 
 might he, that I had heard a great deal about him and had come 
 to see for myself. But I gather from what you say that this is 
 not the custom here. You seem to have plenty of meaningless 
 customs, and none of those that one really wants. We are in 
 advance, certainly. I suppose I shall have to give up^the social 
 side altogether ; " and Henrietta, though she went about with her 
 guide-book and pencil, and wrote a letter to the Interviewer about 
 the Tower (in which she described the execution of Lady Jane 
 Grey), had a depressing sense of falling below her own standard. 
 
 The incident which had preceded Isabel's departure from 
 Gardencourt left a painful trace in the girl's mind; she took 
 no pleasure in recalling Lord Warburton's magnanimous dis- 
 appointment. She could not have done less than what she 
 did ; this was certainly true. But her necessity, all the same, 
 had been a distasteful one, and she felt no desire to take 
 credit for her conduct. Nevertheless, mingled with this ab- 
 sence of *an intellectual relish of it, was a feeling of freedom 
 which in itself was sweet, and which, as she wandered through 
 the great city with her ill-matched companions, occasionally 
 throbbed into joyous excitement. When she walked in Ken- 
 sington Gardens, she stopped the children (mainly of the poorer 
 sort) whom she saw playing on the grass ; she asked them their 
 nam.es and gave them sixpence, and when they were pretty she 
 kissed them. Ralph noticed such incidents ; he noticed every- 
 thing that Isabel did. 
 
 One afternoon, by way of amusing his companions, he invited 
 them to tea in Winchester Square, and he had the house set in 
 order as much as possible, to do honour to their visit. There 
 was another guest, also, to meet the ladies, an amiable bachelor, 
 
182 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 an old friend of Kalph's, who happened to be in town, and who 
 got on uncommonly well with Miss Stackpole. Mr. Bantling, a 
 stout, fair, smiling man of forty, who was extraordinarily well 
 dressed, and whose contributions to the conversation were 
 characterised by vivacity rather than continuity, laughed immo- 
 derately at everything Henrietta said, gave her several cups of 
 tea, examined in her society the bric-a-brac, of which Ealph had 
 a considerable collection, and afterwards, when the host proposed 
 they should go out into the square and pretend it was a fete- 
 cliampetre, walked round the limited inclosure several times with 
 her and listened with candid interest to her remarks upon the 
 inner life. 
 
 " Oh, I see," said Mr. Bantling ; " I daresay you found it very 
 quiet at Gardencourt. Naturally there's not much going on 
 there when there's such a lot of illness about. Touchett's very 
 bad, you know ; the doctors have forbid his being in England at 
 all, and he has only come back to take care of his father. The 
 old man, I believe, has half-a-dozen things the matter with him. 
 They call it gout, but to my certain knowledge he is dropsical 
 as well, though he doesn't look it. You may depend upon it he 
 has got a lot of water somewhere. Of course that sort of thing- 
 makes it awfully slow for people in the house ; I wonder they 
 have them under such circumstances. Then I believe Mr. 
 Touchett is always squabbling with his wife ; she lives away 
 from her husband, you know, in that extraordinary American 
 way of yours. If you want a house where there is always 
 something going on, I recommend you to go down and stay with 
 my sister, Lady Pensil, in Bedfordshire. I'll write to her 
 to-morrow, and I am sure she'll be delighted to ask you. I 
 know just what you want you want a house where they go in 
 for theatricals and picnics and that sort of thing. My sister is 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 183 
 
 just that sort of woman; she is always getting up something or 
 other, and she is always glad to have the sort of people that help 
 her. I am sure she'll ask you down by return of post ; she is 
 tremendously fond of distinguished people and writers. She 
 writes herself, you know ; but I haven't read everything she has 
 written. It's usually poetry, and I don't go in much for poetry 
 unless it's Byron. I suppose you think a great deal of Byron 
 in America," Mr. Bantling continued, expanding in the stimu- 
 lating air of Miss Stackpole's attention, bringing up his sequences 
 promptly, and at last changing his topic, with a natural eagerness 
 to provide suitable conversation for so remarkable a woman. 
 He returned, however, ultimately to the idea of Henrietta's 
 going to stay with Lady Pensil, in Bedfordshire. " I understand 
 what you want," he repeated ; " you want to see some genuine 
 English sport. The Touchetts are not English at all, you 
 know ; they live on a kind of foreign system ; they have got 
 some awfully queer ideas. The old man thinks it's wicked to 
 hunt, I am told. You must get down to my sister's in time for 
 the theatricals, and I am sure she will be glad to give you a 
 part. I am sure you act well ; I know you are very clever. 
 My sister is forty years old, and she has seven children ; but she 
 is going to play the principal part. Of course you needn't act if 
 you don't want to." 
 
 In this manner Mr. Bantling delivered himself, while they 
 strolled over the grass in Winchester Square, which, although it 
 had been peppered by the London soot, invited the tread to 
 linger. Henrietta thought her blooming, easy-voiced bachelor, 
 with his impressibility to feminine merit and his suggestiveness 
 of allusion, a very agreeable man, and she valued the opportunity 
 he offered her. 
 
 " I don't know but I would go, if your sister should ask me," 
 
184 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 she said. " I tliiiik it would be my duty. What do you call 
 her name 1 " 
 
 "Pensil. It's an odd name, but it isn't a bad one." 
 
 "I think one name is as good as another. But what is her 
 rank?" 
 
 " Oh,, she's a baron's wife; a convenient sort of rank. You 
 are fine enough, and you are not too fine." 
 
 " I don't know but what she'd be too fine for me. What do 
 you call the place she lives in -Bedfordshire ? " 
 
 " She lives away in the northern corner of it. It's a tiresome 
 country, but I daresay you won't mind it. I'll try and run down 
 while you are there." 
 
 All this was very pleasant to Miss Stackpole, and she was 
 sorry to be obliged to separate from Lady PensiPs obliging 
 brother. But it happened that she had met the day before, in 
 Piccadilly, some friends whom she had not seen for a year ; the 
 Miss Climbers, two ladies from Wilmington, Delaware, who had 
 been travelling on the continent and were now preparing to 
 re-embark. Henrietta had a long interview with them on the 
 Piccadilly pavement, and though the three ladies all talked at 
 once, they had not exhausted their accumulated topics. It had 
 been agreed therefore that Henrietta should come and dine with 
 them in their lodgings in Jermyn Street at six o'clock on the 
 morrow, and she now bethought herself of this engagement. 
 She prepared to start for Jermyn Street, taking leave first of 
 Ralph Touchett and Isabel, who, seated on garden chairs in 
 another part of the inclosure, were occupied if the term may 
 be used with an exchange of amenities less pointed than the 
 practical colloquy of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling. When 
 it had been settled between Isabel and her friend that they 
 should be re-united at some reputable hour at Pratt's Hotel, 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 185 
 
 Ralph remarked that the latter must have a cab. She could not 
 walk all the way to Jermyn Street. 
 
 " I suppose you mean it's improper for me to walk alone ! " 
 Henrietta exclaimed. " Merciful powers, have I come to this 1 " 
 
 " There is not the slightest need of your walking alone," said 
 Mr. Bantling, in an off-hand tone expressive of gallantry. " I 
 should be greatly pleased to go with you." 
 
 " I simply meant that you would be late for dinner," Ralph 
 answered. " Think of those poor ladies, in their impatience, 
 waiting for you." 
 
 " You had better have a hansom, Henrietta," said Isabel. 
 
 " I will get you a hansom, if you will trust to me," Mr. 
 Bantling went,on. " We might walk a little till we met one." 
 
 " I don't see why I shouldn't trust to him, do youl " Henrietta 
 inquired of Isabel. 
 
 " I don't see what Mr. Bantling could do to you," Isabel 
 answered, smiling ; " but if you like, we will walk with you till 
 you find your cab." 
 
 " Never mind ; we will go alone. Come on, Mr. Bantling, 
 and take care you get me a good one." 
 
 Mr. Bantling promised to do his best, and the two took their 
 departure, leaving Isabel and her cousin standing in the square, 
 over which a clear September twilight had now begun to gather. 
 It was perfectly still; the wide quadrangle of dusky houses 
 showed lights in none of the windows, where the shutters and 
 blinds were closed ; the pavements were a vacant expanse, and 
 putting aside two small children from a neighbouring slum, who, 
 attracted by symptoms of abnormal animation in the interior, 
 were squeezing their necks between the rusty railings of the 
 inclosure, the most vivid object within sight was the big red 
 pillar-post on the south-east corner. 
 
186 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Henrietta will ask him to get into the cab and go with her 
 to Jermyn Street," Ralph observed. He always spoke of Miss 
 Stackpole as Henrietta. 
 
 " Very possibly," said his companion. 
 
 " Or rather, no, she won't," he went on. " But Bantling will 
 ask leave to get in." 
 
 "Very likely again. I am very glad they are such good 
 friends." 
 
 " She has made a conquest. He thinks her a brilliant woman. 
 It may go far," said Ralph. 
 
 Isabel was silent a moment. 
 
 " I call Henrietta a very brilliant woman ; but I don't think 
 it will go far," she rejoined at last. " They would never really 
 know each other. He has not the least idea what she really is, 
 and she has no just comprehension of Mr. Bantling." 
 
 " There is no more usual basis of matrimony than a mutual 
 misunderstanding. But it ought not to be so difficult to under- 
 stand Bob Bantling," Ralph added. " He is a very simple 
 fellow." 
 
 " Yes, but Henrietta is simpler still. And pray, what am I 
 to do 1 "Isabel asked, looking about" her through the fading light, 
 in which the limited landscape-gardening of the square took on 
 a large and effective appearance. " I don't imagine that you 
 will propose that you and I, for our amusement, should drive 
 about London in a hansom." 
 
 "There is no reason why we should not stay here if 
 you don't dislike it. It is very warm; there will be half- 
 an-hour yet before dark ; and if you permit it, I will light a 
 cigarette." 
 
 " You may do what you please," said Isabel, " if you will 
 amuse me till seven o'clock. I propose at that hour to go back 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 187 
 
 and partake of a simple and solitary repast two poached eggs 
 and a muffin at Pratt's Hotel." 
 
 " May I not dine with you?" Ralph asked. 
 
 " No, you will dine at your club." 
 
 They had wandered back to their chairs in the centre of the 
 square again, and Ralph had lighted his cigarette. It would 
 have given him extreme pleasure to be present in person at the 
 modest little feast she had sketched ; but in default of this he 
 liked even being forbidden. For the moment, however, he liked 
 immensely being alone with her, in the thickening dusk, in 
 the centre of the multitudinous town; it made her seem to 
 depend upon him and to be in his power. This power he 
 could exert but vaguely ; the best exercise of it was to accept 
 her decisions submissively. There was almost an emotion in 
 doing so. 
 
 " Why won't you let me dine with you 1 " he asked, after a 
 pause. 
 
 " Because I don't care for it." 
 
 " I suppose you are tired of me." 
 
 " I shall be an hour hence. You see I have the gift of 
 fore-knowledge." 
 
 " Oh, I shall be delightful meanwhile," said Ralph. But he 
 said nothing more, and as Isabel made no rejoinder, they sat 
 some time in silence which seemed to contradict his promise of 
 entertainment. It seemed to him that she was preoccupied, 
 and he wondered what she was thinking about ; there were two 
 or three very possible subjects. At last he spoke again. " Is 
 your objection to my society this evening caused by your 
 expectation of another visitor 1 " 
 
 She turned her head with a glance of her clear, fair eyes. 
 
 " Another visitor 1 What visitor should I have ? " 
 
188 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 He had none to suggest ; which made his question seem to 
 himself silly as well as brutal. 
 
 " You have a great many friends that I don't know," he said, 
 laughing a little awkwardly. "You have a whole past from 
 which I was perversely excluded." 
 
 " You were reserved for my future. You must remember 
 that my past is over there across the water. There is none of 
 it here in London." 
 
 " Very good, then, since your future is seated beside you. 
 Capital thing to have your future so handy." And Ralph 
 lighted another cigarette and reflected that Isabel probably 
 meant that she had received news that Mr. Caspar Goodwood 
 had crossed to Paris. After he had lighted his cigarette he 
 puffed it a while, and then he went on. " I promised a while 
 ago to be very amusing ; but you see I don't come up to the 
 mark, and the fact is there is a good deal of temerity in my 
 undertaking to amuse a person like you. What do you care for 
 my feeble attempts'? You have grand ideas you have a high 
 standard in such matters. I ought at least to bring in a band 
 of music or a company of mountebanks." 
 
 " One mountebank is enough, and you do very well. 
 Pray go on, ancf in another ten minutes I shall begin to 
 laugh." 
 
 " I assure you that I am very serious," said Ealph. " You 
 do really ask a great deal." 
 
 " I don't know what you mean. I ask nothing ! " 
 
 " You accept nothing," said Ralph. She coloured, and now 
 suddenly it seemed to her that she guessed his meaning. But 
 why should he speak to her of such things 1 He hesitated a 
 little, and then he continued. " There is something I should 
 like very much to say to you. It's a question I wish to ask. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 189 
 
 It seems to me I have a right to ask it, because I have a kind 
 of interest in the answer." 
 
 " Ask what you will," Isabel answered gently, " and I will 
 try and satisfy you." 
 
 " Well, then, I hope you won't mind my saying that Lord 
 Warburton has told me of something that has passed between 
 you." 
 
 Isabel started a little; she sat looking at her open fan. 
 ' Very good ; I suppose it was natural he should tell you." 
 
 " I have his leave to let you know he has done so. He has 
 some hope still," said Ralph. 
 
 still r 
 
 " He had it a few days ago." 
 
 "I don't believe he has any now," said the girl. 
 
 " I am very sorry for him, then ; he is such a fine fellow." 
 
 " Pray, did he ask you to talk to me 1 " 
 
 " No, not that. But he told me because he couldn't help it. 
 We are old friends, and he was greatly disappointed. He sent 
 me a line asking me to come and see him, and I rode over to 
 Lockleigh the day before he and his sister lunched with us. 
 He was very heavy-hearted; he had just got a letter from 
 you." 
 
 " Did he show you the letter 1 " asked Isabel, with momentary 
 loftiness. 
 
 " By no means. But he told me it was -a neat refusal. I 
 was very sorry for him," Ralph repeated. 
 
 For some moments Isabel said nothing ; then at last, " Do 
 you know how often he had seen me 1 Five or six times." 
 
 " That's to your glory." 
 
 " It's not for that I say it." 
 
 " What then do you say it for 1 Not to prove that poor 
 
190 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 Warburton's state of mind is superficial, because I ani pretty 
 sure you don't think that." 
 
 Isabel certainly was unable to say that she thought it ; but 
 presently she said something else. " If you have not been 
 requested by Lord Warburton to argue with me, then you are 
 doing it Disinterestedly or for the love of argument." 
 
 "I have no wish to argue with you at all. I only wish to 
 leave you alone. I am simply greatly interested in your own 
 sentiments." 
 
 " I am greatly obliged to you ! " cried Isabel, with a laugh. 
 
 " Of course you mean that I am meddling in what doesn't 
 concern me. But why shouldn't I speak to you of this matter 
 without annoying you or embarrassing myself ? What's the use 
 of being your cousin, if I can't have a few privileges 1 What 
 is the use of adoring you without the hope of a reward, if I 
 can't have a few compensations 1 What is the use of being ill 
 and disabled, and restricted to mere spectatorship at the game 
 of life, if I really can't see the show when I have paid so much 
 for my ticket 1 ? Tell me this," Ralph went on, while Isabel 
 listened to him with quickened attention : " What had you in 
 your mind, when you refused Lord Warburton?" 
 
 " What had I in my mind 1 " 
 
 "What was the logic the view of your situation that 
 dictated so remarkable an act ? " 
 
 " I didn't wish to marry him if that is logic." 
 
 " No, that is not logic and I knew that before. What was 
 it you said to yourself 1 You certainly said more than that." 
 
 Isabel reflected a moment and then she answered this inquiry 
 with a question of her own. " Why do you call it a remarkable 
 act? That is what your mother thinks, too." 
 
 " Warburton is such a fine fellow ; as a man I think he has 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 191 
 
 hardly a fault. And then, he is what they call here a swell. 
 He has immense possessions, and his wife would be thought 
 a superior being. He unites the intrinsic and the extrinsic 
 advantages." 
 
 Isabel watched her cousin while he spoke, as if to see how 
 far he would go. "I refused him because he was too perfect 
 then. I am not perfect myself, and he is too good for me. 
 Besides, his perfection would irritate me." 
 
 " That is ingenious rather than candid," said Ralph. " As a 
 fact, you think nothing in the world too perfect for you." 
 
 " Do I think I am so good 1 " 
 
 " No, but you are exacting, all the same, without the excuse 
 of thinking yourself good. Nineteen women out of twenty, 
 however, even of the most exacting sort, would have contented 
 themselves with Warburton. Perhaps you don't know how he 
 has been run after." 
 
 " I don't wish to know. But it seems to me," said Isabel, 
 " that you told me of several faults that he has, one day when 
 I spoke of him to you." 
 
 Ralph looked grave. "I hope that what I said then had no 
 weight with you ; for they were not faults, the things I spoke 
 of ; they were simply peculiarities of his position. If I had 
 known he wished to marry you, I would never have alluded 
 to them. I think I said that as regards that position he was 
 rather a sceptic. It would have been in your power to make 
 him a believer." 
 
 " I think not. I don't understand the matter, and I am not 
 conscious of any mission of that sort. You are evidently dis- 
 appointed," Isabel added, looking gently but earnestly at her 
 cousin. " You would have liked me to marry Lord Warburton." 
 
 " Not in the least. I am absolutely without a wish on the 
 
192 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 subject. I don't pretend to advise you, and I content myself 
 with watching you with the deepest interest." 
 
 Isabel gave a rather conscious sigh. " I wish I could be 
 as interesting to myself as I am to you ! " 
 
 f ' There you are not candid again ; you are extremely interest- 
 ing to yourself. Do you know, however," said Ralph, " that 
 if you have really given Lord Warburton his final answer, I am 
 rather glad it has been what it was. I don't mean I am glad for 
 you, and still less, of course, for him. I am glad for myself." 
 
 " Are you thinking of proposing to me ? " 
 
 "By no means. From the point of view I speak of that 
 would be fatal ; I should kill the goose that supplies me with 
 golden eggs. I use that animal as a symbol of my insane illu- 
 sions. What I mean is, I shall have the entertainment of seeing 
 what a young lady does who won't marry Lord Warburton." 
 
 " That is what your mother counts upon too," said Isabel. 
 
 "Ah, there will be plenty of spectators ! We shall contem- 
 plate the rest of your career. I shall not see all of it, but I 
 shall probably see the most interesting years. Of course, if you 
 were to marry our friend, you would still have a career a very 
 honourable and brilliant one. But relatively speaking, it would 
 be a little prosaic. It would be definitely marked out in 
 advance ; it would be wanting in the unexpected. You know 
 I am extremely fond of the unexpected, and now that you have 
 kept the game in your hands I depend on your giving us some 
 magnificent example of it." 
 
 " I don't understand you very well," said Isabel, " but I do so 
 well enough to be able to say that if you look for magnificent 
 examples of anything I shall disappoint you." 
 
 " You will do so only by disappointing yourself and that 
 will go hard with you ! " 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 193 
 
 To this Isabel made no direct reply ; there was an amount 
 of truth in it which would bear consideration. At last she said, 
 abruptly " I don't see what harm there is in my wishing not to 
 tie myself. I don't want to begin life by marrying. There are 
 other things a woman can do." 
 
 " There is nothing she can do so well. But you are many- 
 sided." 
 
 " Tf one is two-sided, it is enough," said Isabel. 
 
 " You are the most charming of polygons ! " Ralph broke out, 
 with a laugh. At a glance from his companion, however, he 
 became grave, and to prove it he went on " You want to see 
 life, as the young men say." 
 
 " I don't think I want to see it as the young men want to see 
 it ; but I do want to look about me." 
 
 " You want to drain the cup of experience." 
 
 " No, I don't wish to touch the cup of experience. It's a 
 poisoned drink ! I only want to see for myself." 
 
 " You want to see, but not to feel," said Ealph. 
 
 " I don't think that if one is a sentient being, one can make 
 the distinction," Isabel returned. " I am a good deal like 
 Henrietta. The other day, when I asked her if she wished to 
 marry, she said ' Not till I have seen Europe ! ' I too don't 
 wish to marry until I have seen Europe." 
 
 " You evidently expect that a crowned head will be struck 
 with you." 
 
 " No, that would be worse than marrying Lord Warburton. 
 But it is getting very dark," Isabel continued, " and I must go 
 home. " She rose from her place, but Ealph sat still a moment, 
 looking at her. As he did not follow her, she stopped, and they 
 remained a while exchanging a gaze, full on either side, but 
 
 especially on Ealph's, of utterances too vague for words. 
 VOL. i. o 
 
194 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 "You have answered my question," said Ralph at last. 
 " You have told me what I wanted. I am greatly obliged to 
 you." 
 
 " It seems to me I have told you very little." 
 
 " You have told me the great thing : that the world interests 
 you and that you want to throw yourself into it." 
 
 Isabel's silvery eyes shone for a moment in the darkness. 
 " I never said that." 
 
 " I think you meant it. Don't repudiate it ; it's so fine ! " 
 
 " I don't know what you are trying to fasten upon me, for I 
 am not in the least an adventurous spirit. Women are not like 
 men." 
 
 Ralph slowly rose from his seat, and they walked together to 
 the gate of the square. " No," he said ; " women rarely boast 
 of their courage ; men do so with a certain frequency." 
 
 " Men have it to boast of ! " 
 
 " Women have it too ; you have a great deal." 
 
 " Enough to go home in a cab to Pratt's Hotel ; but not more." 
 
 Ralph unlocked the gate, and after they had passed out he 
 fastened it. 
 
 " We will find your cab," he said ; and as they turned 
 towards a neighbouring street in which it seemed that this 
 quest would be fruitful, he asked her again if he might not see 
 her safely to the inn. 
 
 "By no means," she answered; "you are very tired; you 
 must go home and go to bed." 
 
 The cab was found, and he helped her into it, standing a 
 moment at the door. 
 
 " When people forget I am a sick man I am often annoyed," 
 he said. " But it's worse when they remember it ! " 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 195 
 
 XVI. 
 
 ISABEL had had no hidden motive in wishing her cousin not to 
 take her home ; it simply seemed to her that for some days past 
 she had consumed an inordinate quantity of his time, and the 
 independent spirit of the American girl who ends by regarding 
 perpetual assistance as a sort of derogation to her sanity, had 
 made her decide that for these few hours she must suffice to 
 herself. She had moreover a great fondness for intervals of 
 solitude, and since her arrival in England it had been but 
 scantily gratified. It was a luxury she could always command 
 at home, and she had missed it. That evening, however, an 
 incident occurred which had there been a critic to note it 
 would have taken all colour from the theory that the love of 
 solitude had caused her to dispense with Ralph's attendance. 
 She was sitting, towards nine o'clock, in the dim illumination of 
 Pratt's Hotel, trying with the aid of two tall candles to lose 
 herself in a volume she had brought from Gardencourt, but 
 succeeding only to the extent of reading other words on the page 
 than those that were printed there words that Ralph had 
 spoken to her in the afternoon. 
 
 Suddenly the well-muffled knuckle of the waiter was applied 
 to the door, which presently admitted him, bearing the card of 
 
 a visitor. This card, duly considered, offered to Isabel's startled 
 
 o 2 
 
196 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 vision the name of Mr. Caspar Goodwood. She let the servant 
 stand before her inquiringly for some instants, without signifying 
 her wishes. 
 
 " Shall I show the gentleman up, ma'am 1 " he asked at last, 
 with a slightly encouraging inflection. 
 
 Isabel hesitated still, and while she hesitated she glanced at 
 the mirror. 
 
 " He may come in," she said at last ; and waited for him with 
 some emotion. 
 
 Caspar Goodwood came in and shook hands with her. He 
 said nothing till the servant had left the room again, then he 
 said 
 
 " Why didn't you answer my letter 1 " 
 
 He spoke in a quick, full, slightly peremptory tone the 
 tone of a man whose questions were usually pointed, and who 
 was capable of much insistence. 
 
 Isabel answered him by a question. 
 
 " How did you know I was here? " 
 
 " Miss Stackpole let me know," said Caspar Goodwood. 
 " She told me that you would probably be at home alone this 
 evening, and would be willing to see me." 
 
 " Where did sh6 .see you to tell you that 1 " 
 
 " She didn't see me ; she wrote to me." 
 
 Isabel was silent ; neither of them had seated themselves ; 
 they stood there with a certain air of defiance, or at least of 
 contention. 
 
 "Henrietta never told me that she was writing to you," 
 Isabel said at last. " This is not kind of her." 
 
 "Is it so disagreeable to you to see me?" asked the young 
 man. 
 
 " I didn't expect it. I don't like such surprises." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 197 
 
 "But you knew I was in town; it was natural we should 
 meet." 
 
 " Do you call this meeting 1 I hoped I should not see you. 
 In so large a place as London it seemed to me very possible." 
 
 " Apparently it was disagreeable to you even to write to me," 
 said Mr. Goodwood. 
 
 Isabel made no answer to this ; the sense of Henrietta 
 Stackpole's treachery, as she momentarily qualified it, was 
 strong within her. 
 
 " Henrietta is not delicate ! " she exclaimed with a certain 
 bitterness. " It was a great liberty to take." 
 
 " I suppose I am not . delicate either. The fault is mine as 
 much as hers." 
 
 As Isabel looked at him it seemed to her that his jaw had 
 never been more square. This might have displeased her ; 
 nevertheless she rejoined inconsequently 
 
 " No, it is w not your fault so much as hers. What you have 
 done is very natural." 
 
 "It is indeed ! " cried Caspar Goodwood, with a voluntary 
 laugh. " And now that I have come, at any rate, may I not stay ?" 
 
 " You may sit down, certainly." 
 
 And Isabel went back to her chair again, while her visitor 
 took the first place that offered, in the manner of a man accus- 
 tomed to pay little thought to the sort of chair he sat in. 
 
 " I have been hoping every day for an answer to my letter," 
 he said. " You might have written me a few lines." 
 
 "It was not the trouble of writing that prevented me; I 
 could as easily have written you four pages as one. But my 
 silence was deliberate ; I thought it best." 
 
 He sat with his eyes fixed on hers while she said this ; then 
 he lowered them and attached them to a spot in the carpet, as 
 
198 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 if he were making a strong effort to say nothing but what he 
 ought to say. He was a strong man in the wrong, and he was 
 acute enough to see that an uncompromising exhibition of his 
 strength would only throw the falsity of his position into relief. 
 Isabel was not incapable of finding it agreeable to have an 
 advantage of position over a person of this quality, and though 
 she was not a girl to flaunt her advantage in his face, she was 
 woman enough to enjoy being able to say " You know you 
 ought not to have written to me yourself ! " and to say it with a 
 certain air of triumph. 
 
 Caspar Goodwood raised his eyes to hers again ; they wore an 
 expression of ardent remonstrance. He had a strong sense of 
 justice, and he was ready any day in the year over and above 
 this to argue the question of his rights. 
 
 1 ' You said you hoped never to hear from me again ; I know 
 that. But I never accepted the prohibition. I promised you 
 that you should hear very soon." 
 
 " I did not say that I hoped never to hear from you," said 
 Isabel. 
 
 " Not for five years, then ; for ten years. It is the same 
 thing." 
 
 " Do you find it s*o 1 It seems to me there is a great difference. 
 I can imagine that at the end of ten years we might have a 
 very pleasant correspondence. I shall have matured my epis- 
 tolary style." 
 
 Isabel looked away while she spoke these words, for she 
 knew they were of a much less earnest cast than the countenance 
 of her listener. Her eyes, however, at last came back to him, 
 just as he said, very irrelevantly 
 
 " Are you enjoying your visit to your uncle ] " 
 
 " Very much indeed." She hesitated, and then she broke 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 199 
 
 out with even greater irrelevance, " What good do you expect 
 to get by insisting ? " 
 
 " The good of not losing you." 
 
 " You have no right to talk about losing what is not yours. 
 And even from your own point of view," Isabel added, " you 
 ought to know when to let one alone." 
 
 "I displease you very much," said Caspar Goodwood gloomily ; 
 not as if to provoke her to compassion for a man conscious of 
 this blighting fact, but as if to set it well before himself, so 
 that he might endeavour to act with his eyes upon it. 
 
 " Yes, you displease me very much, and the worst is that it 
 is needless." 
 
 Isabel knew that his was not a soft nature, from which pin- 
 pricks would draw blood ; and from the first of her acquaintance 
 with him and of her having to defend herself against a certain 
 air that he had of knowing better what was good for her than 
 she knew herself, she had recognised the fact that perfect frank- 
 ness was her best weapon. To attempt to spare his sensibility 
 or to escape from him edgewise, as one might do from a man 
 who had barred the way less sturdily this, in dealing with 
 Caspar Goodwood, who would take everything of every sort 
 that one might give him, was wasted agility. It was not 
 that he had not susceptibilities, but his passive surface, as 
 well as his active, was large and firm, and he might always be 
 trusted to dress his wounds himself. In measuring the effect 
 of his suffering, one might always reflect that he had a sound 
 constitution. 
 
 " I can't reconcile myself to that," he said. 
 
 There was a dangerous liberality about this ; for Isabel felt 
 that it was quite open to him to say that he had not always 
 displeased her. 
 
200 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " I can't reconcile myself to it either, and it is not the state 
 of things that ought to exist between ns. If you would only 
 try and banish me from your mind for a few months we should 
 be on good terms again." 
 
 *' I see. If I should cease to think of you for a few months 
 I should find I could keep it up indefinitely." 
 
 " Indefinitely is more than I ask. It is more even than I 
 should like." 
 
 " You know that what you ask is impossible," said the young 
 man, taking his adjective for granted in a manner that Isabel 
 found irritating. 
 
 " Are you not capable of making an effort ? " she demanded. 
 " You are strong for everything else ; why shouldn't you be 
 strong for that ? " 
 
 " Because I am in love with you," said Caspar Goodwood 
 simply. " If one is strong, one loves only the more strongly." 
 
 " There is a good deal in that ; " and indeed our young 
 lady felt the force of it. " Think of me or not, as you find most 
 possible ; only leave me alone." 
 
 " Until when?" 
 
 " Well, for a year or two." 
 
 " Which do you* mean 1 Between one year and two there is a 
 great difference." 
 
 " Call it two, then," said Isabel, wondering whether a little 
 cynicism might not be effective. 
 
 " And what shall I gain by that ? " Mr. Goodwood asked, 
 giving no sign of wincing. 
 
 " You will have obliged me greatly." 
 
 " But what will be my reward 1 " 
 
 " Do you need a reward for an act of generosity ? " 
 
 "Yes, when it involves a great sacrifice." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 201 
 
 " There is no generosity without sacrifice. Men don't under- 
 stand such things. If you make this sacrifice I shall admire 
 you greatly." 
 
 " I don't care a straw for your admiration. Will you marry 
 me 1 ? That is the question." 
 
 " Assuredly not, if I feel as I feel at present." 
 
 " Then I ask again, what I shall gain ? " 
 
 "You will gain quite as much as by worrying me to 
 death ! " 
 
 Caspar Goodwood bent his eyes again and gazed for a while 
 into the crown of his hat. A deep flush overspread his face, 
 and Isabel could perceive that this dart at last had struck home. 
 To see a strong man in pain had something terrible for her, and 
 she immediately felt very sorry for her visitor. 
 
 " Why do you make me say such things to you 1 " she cried 
 in a trembling voice. " I only want to be gentle to be kind. 
 It is not delightful to me to feel that people care for me, and 
 yet to have to try and reason them out of it. I think others 
 also ought to be considerate ; we have each to judge for our- 
 selves. I know you are considerate, as much as you can be ; 
 you have good reasons for what you do. But I don't want to 
 marry. I shall probably never marry. I have a perfect right 
 to feel that way, and it is no kindness to a woman'to urge her 
 to persuade her against her will. If I give you pain I can only 
 say I am very sorry. It is not my fault ; I can't marry you 
 simply to please you. I won't say that I shall always remain 
 your friend, because when women say that, in these circum- 
 stances, it is supposed, I believe, to be a sort of mockery. But 
 try me some day." 
 
 Caspar Goodwood, during this speech, had kept his eyes fixed 
 upon the name of his hatter, and it was not until some time 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 after she had ceased speaking that he raised them. When he 
 did so, the sight of a certain rosy, lovely eagerness in Isabel's 
 face threw some confusion into his attempt to analyse what she 
 had said. " I will go home I will go to-morrow I will leave 
 you alone," he murmured at last. " Only," he added in a louder 
 tone " I hate to lose sight of you ! " 
 
 " Never fear. I will do no harm." 
 
 " You will marry some one else," said Caspar Goodwood. 
 
 " Do you think that is a generous charge 1 " 
 
 11 Why not 1 Plenty of men will ask you." 
 
 " I told you just now that I don't wish to marry, and that I 
 shall probably never do so." 
 
 " I know you did ; but I don't believe it." 
 
 " Thank you very much. You appear to think I am attempt- 
 ing to deceive you ; you say very delicate things." 
 
 "Why should I not say that] You have given me no 
 promise that you will not marry." 
 
 " No, that is all that would be wanting ! " cried Isabel, with a 
 bitter laugh. 
 
 " You think you won't, but you will," her visitor went on, as 
 if he were preparing himself for the worst. 
 
 " Very well, I will then. Have it as you please." 
 
 " I don't know, however," said Caspar Goodwood, " that my 
 keeping you in sight would prevent it." 
 
 " Don't you indeed 1 I am, after all, very much afraid of you. 
 Do you think I am so very easily pleased 1 " she asked suddenly, 
 changing her tone. 
 
 " No, I don't ; I shall try and console myself with that. But 
 there are a certain number of very clever men in the world ; if 
 there were only one, it would be enough. You will be sure to 
 take no one who is not." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 203 
 
 u I don't need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to 
 live," said Isabel. " I can find it out for myself." 
 
 " To live alone, do you mean ? I wish that when you have 
 found that out, you would teach me." 
 
 Isabel glanced at him a moment ; then, with a quick smile 
 " Oh, you ought to marry ! " she said. 
 
 Poor Caspar may be pardoned if for an instant this exclama- 
 tion seemed to him to have the infernal note, and I cannot take 
 upon myself to say that Isabel uttered it in obedience to an 
 impulse strictly celestial. It was a fact, however, that it had 
 always seemed to her that Caspar Goodwood, of all men, ought 
 to enjoy the whole devotion of some tender woman. "God 
 forgive you ! " he murmured between his teeth, turning 
 away. 
 
 Her exclamation had put her slightly in the wrong, and after 
 a moment she felt the need to right herself. The easiest way 
 to do it was to put her suitor in the wrong. " You do me great 
 injustice you say what you don't know ! " she broke out. " I 
 should not be an easy victim I have proved it." 
 
 " Oh, to me, perfectly." 
 
 " I have proved it to others as well." And she paused a 
 moment. " I refused a proposal of marriage last week what 
 they call a brilliant one." 
 
 " I am very glad to hear it," said the young man, 
 gravely. 
 
 " It was a proposal that many girls would have accepted ; it 
 had everything to recommend it." Isabel had hesitated to tell 
 this story, but now she had begun, the satisfaction of speaking 
 it out and doing herself justice took possession of her. "I 
 was offered a great position and a great fortune by a person 
 whom I like extremely." 
 
204 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 Caspar gazed at her with, great interest. "Is he an 
 Englishman ? " 
 
 " He is an English nobleman," said Isabel. 
 
 Mr. Goodwood received this announcement in silence ; then, 
 at last, he said " I am glad he is disappointed." 
 
 " "Well, then, as you have companions in misfortune, make the 
 best of it." 
 
 " I don't call him a companion," said Caspar, grimly. 
 
 "Why not since I declined his offer absolutely?" 
 
 "That doesn't make him my companion. Besides, he's an 
 Englishman." 
 
 " And pray is not an Englishman a human being 1 " Isabel 
 inquired. 
 
 " Oh, no ; he's superhuman." 
 
 "You are angry," said the girl. "We have discussed this 
 matter quite enough." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I am. angry. I plead guilty to that ! " 
 
 Isabel turned away from him, walked to the open window, 
 and stood a moment looking into the dusky vacancy of the 
 street, where a turbid gaslight alone represented social anima- 
 tion. Eor some time neither of these young persons spoke ; 
 Caspar lingered near the chimney-piece, with his eyes gloomily 
 fixed upon our heroine. She had virtually requested him to 
 withdraw he knew that ; but at the risk of making himself 
 odious to her he kept his ground. She was far too dear to him 
 to be easily forfeited, and he had sailed across the Atlantic to 
 extract some pledge from her. Presently she left the window 
 and stood before him again. 
 
 "You do me very little justice," she said "after my telling 
 you what I told you just now. I am sorry I told you since it 
 matters so little to you." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 205 
 
 "Ah," cried the young man, "if you were thinking of me 
 when you did it ! " And then he paused, with the fear that she 
 might contradict so happy a thought. 
 
 " I was thinking of you a little," said Isabel. 
 
 "A little 1 I don't understand. If the knowledge that I love 
 you had any weight with you at all, it must have had a good deal." 
 
 Isabel shook her head impatiently, as if to carry off a blush. 
 " I have refused a noble gentleman. Make the most of that." 
 
 "I thank you, then," said Caspar Goodwood, gravely. "I 
 thank you immensely." 
 
 " And now you had better go home." 
 
 " May I not see you again ? " he asked. 
 
 " I think it is better not. You will be sure to talk of this, 
 and you see it leads to nothing." 
 
 " I promise you not to say a word that will annoy you." 
 
 Isabel reflected a little, and then she said " I return in a day 
 or two to my uncle's, and I can't propose to you to come there ; 
 it would be v.ery inconsistent." 
 
 Caspar Goodwood, on his side, debated within himself. "You 
 must do me justice too. I received an invitation to your uncle's 
 more than a week ago, and I declined it." 
 
 " From whom was your invitation 1 " Isabel asked, surprised. 
 
 "From Mr. Ralph Touchett, whom I suppose to be your 
 cousin. I declined it because I had not your authorisation to 
 accept it. The suggestion that Mr. Touchett should invite me 
 appeared to have come from Miss Stackpole." 
 
 " It certainly did not come from me. Henrietta certainly goes 
 very far," Isabel added. 
 
 " Don't be too hard on her that touches me." 
 
 " No ; if you declined, that was very proper of you, and 
 I thank you for it." And Isabel gave a little shudder of 
 
206 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 dismay at the thought that Lord Warburton and Mr. Goodwood 
 might have met at Gardencourt : it would have been so awkward 
 for Lord Warburton ! 
 
 " When you leave your uncle, where are you going ? " Caspar 
 asked. 
 
 "I shall go abroad with my aunt to Florence and other 
 places." 
 
 The serenity of this announcement struck a chill to the young 
 man's heart ; he seemed to see her whirled away into circles from 
 which he was inexorably excluded. Nevertheless he went on 
 quickly with his questions. " And when shall you come back 
 to America *? " 
 
 " Perhaps not for ailong time ; I am very happy here." 
 
 "Do you mean to give up your country 1 " 
 
 " Don't be an infant." 
 
 "Well, you will be out of my sight indeed!" said Caspar 
 Goodwood. 
 
 " I don't know," she answered, rather grandly. " The world 
 strikes me as small." 
 
 " It is too large for me ! " Caspar exclaimed, with a simplicity 
 which our young lady might have found touching if her face 
 had not been set Against concessions. 
 
 This attitude was part of a system, a theory, that she had 
 lately embraced, and to be thorough she said after a moment 
 " Don't think me unkind if I say that it's just that being out 
 of your sight that I like. If you were in the same place as I, 
 I should feel as if you were watching me, and I don't like that. 
 I like my liberty too much. If there is a thing in the world 
 that I am fond of," Isabel went on, with a slight recurrence of 
 the grandeur that had shown itself a moment before "it is my 
 personal independence." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 207 
 
 But whatever there was of grandeur in this speech moved 
 Caspar Goodwood's admiration ; there was nothing that displeased 
 him in the sort of feeling it expressed. This feeling not only did 
 no violence to his way of looking at the girl he wished to make 
 his wife, but seemed a grace the more in so ardent a spirit. To 
 his mind she had always had wings, and this was but the flutter 
 of those stainless pinions. He was not afraid of having a wife 
 with a certain largeness of movement ; he was a man of long 
 steps himself. Isabel's words, if they had been meant to shock 
 him, failed of the mark, and only made him smile with the 
 sense that here was common ground. " Who would wish less 
 to curtail your liberty than I?" he asked. "What can give 
 me greater pleasure than to see you perfectly independent 
 doing whatever you like 1 It is to make you independent that 
 I want to marry you." 
 
 " That's a beautiful sophism," said the girl, with a smile more 
 beautiful still. 
 
 "An unmarried woman a girl of your age is not inde- 
 pendent. There .are all sorts of things she can't do. She is 
 hampered at every step." 
 
 " That's as she looks at the question," Isabel answered, with 
 much spirit. "I am not in my first youth I can do what I 
 choose I belong quite to the independent class. I have neither 
 father nor mother ; I am poor ; I am of a serious disposition, 
 and not pretty. I therefore am not bound to be timid and 
 conventional; indeed I can't afford such luxuries. Besides, I 
 try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more 
 honourable than not to judge at all. I don't wish to be a mere 
 sheep in the flock ; I wish to choose my fate and know some- 
 thing of human affairs beyond what other people think it com- 
 patible with propriety to tell me." She paused a moment, but 
 
208 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 not long enough for her companion to reply. He was apparently 
 on the point of doing so, when she went on " Let me say this 
 to you, Mr. Goodwood. You are so kind as to speak of being 
 afraid of my marrying. If you should hear a rumour that I 
 am on the point of doing so girls are liable to have such things 
 said about them remember what I have told you about my 
 love of liberty, and venture to doubt it." 
 
 There was something almost passionately positive in the tone 
 in which Isabel gave him this advice, and he saw a shining 
 candour in her eyes which helped him to believe her. On the 
 whole he felt reassured, and you might have perceived it by the 
 manner in which he said, quite eagerly " You want simply to 
 travel for two years 1 I am quite willing to wait two years, and 
 you may do what you like in the interval. If that is all you 
 want, pray say so. I don't want you to be conventional ; do I 
 Strike you as conventional myself 1 Do you want to improve 
 your mind ? Your mind is quite good enough for me ; but if 
 it interests you to wander about a while and see different 
 countries, I shall be delighted to help you, in any way in my 
 power." 
 
 " You are very generous ; that is nothing new to me. The 
 best way to help me will be to put as many hundred miles of 
 sea between us as possible." 
 
 " One would think you were going to commit a crime ! " said 
 Caspar Goodwood. 
 
 " Perhaps I am. I wish to be free even to do that, if the 
 fancy takes me." 
 
 " Well then," he said, slowly, " I will go home." And he 
 put out his hand, trying to look contented and confident. 
 
 Isabel's confidence in him, however, was greater than any he 
 could feel in her. Not that he thought her capable of commit- 
 
THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 209 
 
 ting a crime ; but, turn it over as he would, there was some- 
 thing ominous in the way she reserved her option. As 
 Isabel took his hand, she felt a great respect for him; she 
 knew how much he cared for her, and she thought him 
 magnanimous. They stood so for a moment, looking at each 
 other, united by a handclasp which was not merely passive 
 on her side. "That's right," she said, very kindly, almost 
 tenderly. "You will lose nothing by being a reasonable 
 man." 
 
 " But I will come back, wherever you are/ two years hence," 
 he returned, with characteristic grimness. 
 
 We have seen that our young lady was inconsequent, and at 
 this she suddenly changed her note. "Ah, remember, I 
 promise nothing absolutely nothing ! " Then more softly, as 
 if to help him to leave her, she added " And remember, too, 
 that I shall not be an easy victim ! " 
 
 " You will get very sick of your independence." 
 
 " Perhaps I shall ; it is even very probable. When that day 
 comes I shall be very glad to see you." 
 
 She had laid her hand on the knob of the door that led into 
 her own room, and she waited a moment to see whether her 
 visitor would not take his departure. But he appeared unable to 
 move ; there was still an immense unwillingness in his attitude 
 a deep remonstrance in his eyes. 
 
 " I must leave you now," said Isabel ; and she opened the 
 door, and passed into the other room. 
 
 This apartment was dark, but the darkness was tempered by 
 a vague radiance sent up through the window from the court 
 of the hotel, and Isabel could make out the masses of the 
 furniture, the dim shining of the mirror, and the looming of 
 
 the big four-posted bed. She stood still a moment, listening, 
 VOL. i. p 
 
210 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 and at last she heard Caspar Goodwood walk out of the 
 sitting-room and close the door behind him. She stood still 
 a moment longer, and then, by an ' irresistible impulse, she 
 dropped on her knees before her bed, and hid her face in her 
 arms. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 211 
 
 XVII. 
 
 SHE was not praying; she was trembling trembling all 
 over. She was an excitable creature, and now she was much 
 excited; but she wished to resist her excitement, and the 
 attitude of prayer, which she kept for some time, seemed to 
 help her to be still. She was extremely glad Caspar Goodwood 
 was gone ; there was something exhilarating in having got rid 
 of him. As Isabel became conscious of this feeling she bowed 
 her head a little lower ; the feeling was there, throbbing in her 
 heart ; it was a part of her emotion ; but it was a thing to be 
 ashamed of it was profane and out of place. It was not for 
 some ten minutes that she rose from her knees, and when she 
 came back to the sitting-room she was still trembling a little. 
 Her agitation had two causes ; part of it was to be accounted 
 for by her long discussion with Mr. Goodwood, but it might be 
 feared that the rest was simply the enjoyment she found in the 
 exercise of her power. She sat down in the same chair again, 
 and took up her book, but without going through the form of 
 opening the volume. She leaned back, with that low, soft, 
 aspiring murmur with which she often expressed her gladness 
 in accidents of which the brighter side was not superficially 
 obvious, and gave herself up to the satisfaction of having re- 
 fused two ardent suitors within a fortnight. That love of 
 
 P 2 
 
212 THE PQRTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 liberty of which she had given Caspar Goodwood so bold a 
 sketch was as yet almost exclusively theoretic ; she had not 
 been able to indulge it on a large scale. But it seemed to her 
 that she had done something ; she had tasted of the delight, if 
 not of battle, at least of victory ; she had done what she pre- 
 ferred. In the midst of this agreeable sensation the image of 
 Mr. Goodwood taking his sad walk homeward through the 
 dingy town presented itself with a certain reproachful force ; so 
 that, as at the same moment the door of the room was opened, 
 she rose quickly with an apprehension that he had come back. 
 But it was only Henrietta Stackpole returning from her dinner. 
 
 Miss Stackpole immediately saw that something had happened 
 to Isabel, and indeed the discovery demanded no great penetra- 
 tion. Henrietta went straight up to her friend, who received 
 her without a greeting. Isabel's elation in having sent Caspar 
 Goodwood back to America pre-supposed her being glad that he 
 had come to see her ; but at the same time she perfectly remem- 
 bered that Henrietta had had no right to set a trap for her. 
 
 " Has he been here, dear 1 " Miss Stackpole inquired, softly. 
 
 Isabel turned away, and for some moments answered nothing. 
 
 " You acted very wrongly," she said at last. 
 
 " I acted for he best, dear. I only hope you acted as well." 
 
 " You are not the judge. I can't trust you," said Isabel. 
 
 This declaration was unflattering, but Henrietta was much too 
 unselfish to heed the charge it conveyed ; she cared only for 
 what it intimated with regard to her friend. 
 
 "Isabel Archer," she declared, with equal abruptness and 
 solemnity, " if you marry one of these people, I will never speak 
 to you again ! " 
 
 " Before making so terrible a threat, you had better wait till 
 I am asked," Isabel replied. Never having said a word to Miss 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 213 
 
 Stackpole about Lord Warburton's overtures, she had now no 
 impulse whatever to justify herself to Henrietta by telling her 
 that she had refused that nobleman. 
 
 " Oh, you'll be asked quick enough, once you get off on the 
 continent. Annie Climber was asked three times in Italy poor 
 plain little Annie." 
 
 " Well, if Annie Climber was not captured, why should 
 I be]" 
 
 " I don't believe Annie was pressed ; but you'll be." 
 
 " That's a nattering conviction," said Isabel, with a laugh. 
 
 " I don't natter you, Isabel, I tell you the truth ! " cried her 
 friend. " I hope you don't mean to tell me that you didn't give 
 Mr. Goodwood some hope." 
 
 " I don't see why I should tell you anything ; as I said to 
 you just now, I can't trust you. But since you are so much 
 interested in Mr. Goodwood, I won't conceal from you that he 
 returns immediately to America." 
 
 "You don't mean to say you have sent him off?" Henrietta 
 broke out in dismay. 
 
 " I asked him to leave me alone ; and I ask you the same, 
 Henrietta." 
 
 Miss Stackpole stood there with expanded eyes, and then she 
 went to the mirror over the chimney-piece and took off her 
 bonnet. 
 
 "I hope you have enjoyed your dinner," Isabel remarked, 
 lightly, as she did so. 
 
 But Miss Stackpole was not to be diverted by frivolous pro- 
 positions, nor bribed by the offer of autobiographic opportunities. 
 
 "Do you know where you are going, Isabel Archer 3 " 
 
 "Just now I am going to bed," said Isabel, with persistent 
 frivolity. 
 
214 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Do you know where you are drifting 1 " Henrietta went on, 
 holding out her bonnet delicately. 
 
 "No, I haven't the least idea, and I find it very pleasant 
 not to know. A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with 
 four horses over roads that one can't see that's my idea of 
 happiness." 
 
 " Mr. Goodwood certainly didn't teach you to say such things 
 as that like the heroine of an immoral novel," said Miss Stack- 
 pole. " You are drifting to some great mistake." 
 
 Isabel was irritated by her friend's interference, but even in 
 the midst of her irritation she tried to think what truth this 
 declaration could represent. She could think of nothing that 
 diverted her from saying " You must be very fond of me, 
 Henrietta, to be willing to be so disagreeable to me." 
 
 " I love you, Isabel," said Miss Stackpole, with feeling. 
 
 " Well, if you love me, let me alone. I asked that of Mr. 
 Goodwood, and I must also ask it of you." 
 
 " Take care you are not let alone too much." 
 
 " That is what Mr. Goodwood said to me. I told him I must 
 take the risks." 
 
 " You are a creature of risks you make me shudder ! " cried 
 Henrietta. " When does Mr. Goodwood return to America 1 " 
 
 " I don't know he didn't tell me." 
 
 "Perhaps you didn't inquire," said Henrietta, with the note 
 of righteous irony. 
 
 " I gave him too little satisfaction to have the right to ask 
 questions of him." 
 
 This assertion seemed to Miss Stackpole for a moment to bid 
 defiance to comment ; but at last she exclaimed " Well, Isabel, 
 if I didn't know you, I might think you were heartless ! " 
 
 " Take care," said Isabel; " you are spoiling me." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 215 
 
 " I am afraid I have done that already. I hope, at least," 
 Miss Stackpole added, " that he may cross with Annie 
 Climber ! " 
 
 Isabel learned from her the next morning that she had deter- 
 mined not to return to Gardencourt (where old Mr. Touchett 
 had promised her a renewed welcome), but to await in London 
 the arrival of the invitation that Mr. Bantling had promised her 
 from his sister, Lady PensiL Miss Stackpole related very freely 
 her conversation with Ralph Touchett's sociable friend, and 
 declared to Isabel that she really believed she had now got hold 
 of something that would lead to something. On the receipt of 
 Lady Pensil's letter Mr. Bantling had virtually guaranteed 
 the arrival of this document she would immediately depart for 
 Bedfordshire, and if Isabel cared to look out for her impressions 
 in the Interviewer, she would certainly find them. Henrietta 
 was evidently going to see something of the inner life this time . 
 
 "Do you know where you are drifting, Henrietta Stackpole 1 " 
 Isabel asked, imitating the tone in which her friend had spoken 
 the night before. 
 
 " I am drifting to a big position that of queen of American 
 journalism. If my next letter isn't copied all over the West, 
 I'll swallow my pen- wiper ! " 
 
 She had arranged with her friend Miss Annie Climber, the 
 young lady of the continental offers, that they should go together 
 to make those purchases which were to constitute Miss Climber's 
 farewell to a hemisphere in which she at least had been appreci- 
 ated and she presently repaired to Jermyn Street to pick up 
 her companion. Shortly after her departure Ralph Touchett 
 was announced, and as soon as he came in Isabel saw that he 
 had something on his mind. He very soon took his cousin 
 into his confidence. He had received a telegram from his 
 
216 THE PORTEAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 mother, telling him that his father had had a sharp attack of 
 his old malady, that she was much alarmed, and that she begged 
 Ralph would instantly return to Gardencourt. On this occa- 
 sion, at least, Mrs. Touchett's devotion to the electric wire had 
 nothing incongruous. 
 
 " I have judged it best to see the great doctor, Sir Matthew 
 Hope, first," Ralph said ; " by great good luck he's in town. He 
 is to see me at half-past twelve, and I shall make sure of his 
 coming down to Gardencourt which he will do the more readily 
 as he has already seen my father several times, both there and in 
 London. There is an express at two-forty-five, which I shall 
 take, and you will come back with me, or remain here a few 
 days longer, exactly as you prefer." 
 
 " I will go with you ! " Isabel exclaimed. " I don't suppose 
 I can be of any use to my uncle, but if he is ill I should like to 
 be near him." 
 
 "I think you like him," said Ralph, with a certain shy 
 pleasure in his eye. " You appreciate him, which all the world 
 hasn't done. The quality is too fine." 
 
 " I think I love him," said Isabel, simply. 
 
 " That's very well. After his son, he is your greatest admirer." 
 
 Isabel welcomed this assurance, but she gave secretly a little 
 sigh of relief at the thought that Mr. Touchett was one of those 
 admirers who could not propose to marry her. This, however, 
 was not what she said ; she went on to inform Ralph that there 
 were other reasons why she should not remain in London. She 
 was tired. of it and wished to leave it; and then Henrietta was 
 going away going to stay in Bedfordshire." 
 
 " In Bedfordshire 1 " Ralph exclaimed, with surprise. 
 
 "With Lady Pensil, the sister of Mr. Bantling, who has 
 answered for an invitation." 
 
THE PORTKAIT OF A LADY. 217 
 
 Kalph was feeling anxious, but at this he broke into a laugh. 
 Suddenly, however, he looked grave again. " Bantling is a man 
 of courage. But if the invitation should get lost on the way ] " 
 
 " I thought the British post-office was impeccable." 
 
 " The good Homer sometimes nods," said Ralph. " However," 
 he went on, more brightly, " the good Bantling never does, and, 
 whatever happens, he will take care of Henrietta." 
 
 Ralph went to keep his appointment with Sir Matthew Hope, 
 and Isabel made her arrangements for quitting Pratt's Hotel. 
 Her uncle's danger touched her nearly, and while she stood 
 before her open trunk, looking about her vaguely for what she 
 should put into it, the tears suddenly rushed into her eyes. It 
 was perhaps for this reason that when Ralph came back at two 
 o'clock to take her to the station she was not yet ready. 
 
 He found Miss Stackpole, however, in the sitting-room, where 
 she had just risen from the lunch-table, and this lady immedi- 
 ately expressed her regret at his father's illness. 
 
 " He is a grand old man," she said ; " he is faithful to the 
 last. If it is really to be the last excuse my alluding to it, 
 but you must often have thought of the possibility I am sorry 
 that I shall not be at Gardencourt." 
 
 " You will amuse yourself much more in Bedfordshire." 
 
 " I shall be sorry to amuse myself at such a time," said 
 Henrietta, with much propriety. But she immediately added 
 " I should like so to commemorate the closing scene." 
 
 " My father may live a long time," said Ralph, simply. 
 Then, adverting to topics more cheerful, he interrogated Miss 
 Stackpole as to her own future. 
 
 Now that Ralph was in trouble, she addressed him in a tone 
 of larger allowance, and told him that she was much indebted 
 to him for having made her acquainted with Mr. Bantling. 
 
218 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " He has told me just the things I want to know," she said; 
 " all the society-items and all about the royal family. I can't 
 make out that what he tells me about the royal family is much 
 to their credit ; but he says that's only my peculiar way of 
 looking at it. Well, all I want is that he should give me the 
 facts; I can put them together quick enough, once I've got 
 them." And she added that Mr. Bantling had been so good 
 as to promise to come and take her out in the afternoon. 
 " To take you where 1 " Ralph ventured to inquire. 
 ' ' To Buckingham Palace. He is going to show me over it, 
 so that I may get some idea how they live." 
 
 " Ah," said Ralph, " we leave you in good hands. The first 
 thing we shall hear is that you are invited to Windsor Castle." 
 
 " If they ask me, I shall certainly go. Once I get started I 
 am not afraid. But for all that," Henrietta added in a moment, 
 " I am not satisfied; I am not satisfied about Isabel." 
 " What is her last misdemeanour 1 " 
 
 " Well, I have told you before, and I suppose there is no 
 harm in my going on. I always finish a subject that I take up. 
 Mr. Goodwood was here last night." 
 
 Ralph opened his eyes ; he even blushed a little his blush 
 being the sign of an emotion somewhat acute. He remembered 
 that Isabel, in separating from him in Winchester Square, had 
 repudiated his suggestion that her motive in doing so was the 
 expectation of a visitor at Pratt's Hotel, and it was a novel 
 sensation to him to have to suspect her of duplicity. On the 
 other hand, he quickly said to himself, what concern was it of 
 his that she should have made an appointment with a lover ? 
 Had it not been thought graceful in every age that young ladies 
 should make a mystery of such appointments'? Ralph made 
 Miss Stackpole a diplomatic answer. " I should have thought 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 219 
 
 that, with the views you expressed to me the other day, that 
 would satisfy you perfectly." 
 
 " That he should come to see her ? That was very well, as 
 far as it went. It was a little plot of mine ; I let him know 
 that we were in London, and when it had been arranged that I 
 should spend the evening out, I just sent him a word a word 
 to the wise. I hoped he would find her alone ; I won't pretend 
 I didn't hope that you would be out of the way. He came to 
 see her ; but he might as well have stayed away." 
 
 " Isabel was cruel 1 " .Ralph inquired, smiling, and relieved at 
 learning that his cousin had not deceived him. 
 
 " I don't exactly know what passed between them. But she 
 gave him no satisfaction she sent him back to America." 
 
 " Poor Mr. Goodwood ! " Ralph exclaimed. 
 
 " Her only idea seems to be to get rid of him," Henrietta 
 went on. 
 
 " Poor Mr. Goodwood ! " repeated Ralph. The exclamation, 
 it must be confessed, was somewhat mechanical. It failed 
 exactly to express his thoughts, which were taking another 
 line. 
 
 " You don't say that as if you felt it ; I don't believe you care." 
 
 " Ah," said Ralph, " you must remember that I don't know 
 this interesting young man that I have never seen him." 
 
 " Well, I shall see him, and I shall tell him not to give up. 
 If I didn't believe Isabel would come round," said Miss Stack- 
 pole " well, I'd give her up myself ! " 
 
220 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 IT had occurred to Ralph that under the circumstances Isabel's 
 parting with Miss Stackpole might be of a slightly embarrassed 
 nature, and he went down to the door of the hotel in advance 
 of his cousin, who after a slight delay followed, with the traces 
 of an unaccepted remonstrance, as he thought, in her eye. The 
 two made the journey to Gardencourt in almost unbroken 
 silence, and the servant who met them at the station had no 
 better news to give them of Mr. Touchett a fact which caused 
 Ralph to congratulate himself afresh on Sir Matthew Hope's 
 having promised to come down in the five o'clock train and spend 
 the night. Mrs. Touchett, he learned, on reaching home, had 
 been constantly with the old man, and was with him at that 
 moment ; and this fact made Ralph say to himself that, after 
 all, what his mother wanted was simply opportunity. The 
 finest natures were those that shone on large occasions. Isabel 
 went to her own room, noting, throughout the house, that per- 
 ceptible hush which precedes a crisis. At the end of an hour, 
 however, she came down-stairs in search of her aunt, whom 
 she wished to ask about Mr. Touchett. She went into the 
 library, but Mrs. Touchett was not there, and as the weather, 
 which had been damp and chill, was now altogether spoiled, 
 it was not probable that she had gone for her' usual walk in 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 221 
 
 the grounds. Isabel was on the point of ringing to send an 
 inquiry to her room, when her attention was taken by an un- 
 expected sound the sound of low music proceeding appar- 
 ently from the drawing-room. She knew that her aunt never 
 touched the piano, and the musician was therefore probably 
 Ralph, who played for his own amusement. That he should 
 have resorted to this recreation at the present time, indicated 
 apparently that his anxiety about his father had been relieved ; 
 so that Isabel took her way to the drawing-room with much 
 alertness. The drawing-room at Gardencourt was an apart- 
 ment of great distances, and as the piano was placed at the end 
 of it furthest removed from the door at which Isabel entered, 
 her arrival was not noticed by the person seated before the 
 instrument. This person was neither Ralph nor his mother ; it 
 was a lady whom Isabel immediately saw to be a stranger to 
 herself, although her back was presented to the door. This 
 back an ample and well-dressed one Isabel contemplated for 
 some moments in surprise. The lady was of course a visitor 
 who had arrived during her absence, and who had not been 
 mentioned by either of the servants one of them her aunt's 
 maid of whom she had had speech since her return. Isabel 
 had already learned, however, that the British domestic is not 
 effusive, and she was particularly conscious of having been 
 treated with dryness by her aunt's maid, whose offered assistance 
 the young lady from Albany versed, as young ladies are in 
 Albany, in the very metaphysics of the toilet had perhaps 
 made too light of. The arrival of a visitor was far from dis- 
 agreeable to Isabel; she had not yet divested herself of a 
 youthful impression that each new acquaintance 'would exert 
 some momentous influence upon her life. By the time she 
 had made these reflections she became aware that the lady at 
 
222 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 the piano played remarkably well. She was playing something 
 of Beethoven's Isabel knew not what, but she recognised 
 Beethoven and she touched the piano softly and discreetly, 
 but with evident skill. Her touch was that of an artist ; Isabel 
 sat down noiselessly on the nearest chair and waited till the 
 end of the piece. When it was finished she felt a strong desire 
 to thank the player, and rose from her seat to do so, while at the 
 same time the lady at the piano turned quickly round, as if she 
 had become aware of her presence. 
 
 "That is very beautiful, and your playing makes it more 
 beautiful still," said Isabel, with all the young radiance with 
 which she usually uttered a truthful rapture. 
 
 "You don't think I disturbed Mr. Touchett, then?" the 
 musician answered, as sweetly as this compliment deserved. 
 " The house is so large, and his room so far away, that I thought 
 I might venture especially as I played just just du bout des 
 doigts." 
 
 " She is a Frenchwoman," Isabel said to herself ; " she says 
 that as if she were French." And this supposition made the 
 stranger more interesting to our speculative heroine. " I hope 
 my uncle is doing well," Isabel added. ** I should think that 
 to hear such lovety music as that would really make him feel 
 better." 
 
 The lady gave a discriminating smile. 
 
 " I am afraid there are moments in life when even Beethoven 
 has nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that they 
 are our worst moments." 
 
 " I am not in that state now," said Isabel. " On the con- 
 trary, I should be so glad if you would play something more." 
 
 " If it will give you pleasure most willingly." And this 
 obliging person took her place again, and struck a few chords, 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 223 
 
 while Isabel sat down nearer the instrument. Suddenly the 
 stranger stopped, with her hands on the keys, half-turning and 
 looking over her shoulder at the girl. She was forty years old, 
 and she was not pretty; but she had a delightful expression. 
 " Excuse me," she said ; " but are you the niece the young 
 American 1 " 
 
 " I am my aunt's niece/' said Isabel, with naivete. 
 The lady at the piano sat still a moment longer, looking over 
 her shoulder with her charming smile. 
 
 " That's very well," she said, " we are compatriots." 
 And then she began to play. 
 
 " Ah, then she is not French," Isabel murmured ; and as the 
 opposite supposition had made her interesting, it might have 
 seemed that this revelation would have diminished her effective- 
 ness. But such was not the fact ; for Isabel, as she listened to 
 the music, found much stimulus to conjecture in the fact that 
 an American should so strongly resemble a foreign woman. 
 
 Her companion played in the same manner as before, softly 
 and solemnly, and while she played the shadows deepened in the 
 room. The autumn twilight gathered in, and from her place 
 Isabel could see the rain, which had now begun in earnest, 
 washing the cold-looking lawn, and the wind shaking the great 
 trees. At last, when the music had ceased, the lady got up, and, 
 coming to her auditor, smiling, before Isabel had time to thank 
 her again, said 
 
 " I am very glad you have come back ; I have heard a great 
 deal about you." 
 
 Isabel thought her a very attractive person ; but she never- 
 theless said, with a certain abruptness, in answer to this 
 speech 
 
 "From whom have you heard about me ]" 
 
224 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 The stranger hesitated a single moment, and then 
 
 " From your uncle," she answered. " I have been here three 
 days, and the first day he let me come and pay him a visit in his 
 room. Then he talked constantly of you." 
 
 " As you didn't know me, that must have bored you." 
 
 " It made me want to know you. All the more that since 
 then your aunt being so much with Mr. Touchett I have been 
 quite alone, and have got rather tired of my own society. I 
 have not chosen a good moment for my visit." 
 
 A servant had come in with lamps, and was presently followed 
 by another, bearing the tea-tray. Of the appearance of this 
 repast Mrs. Touchett had apparently been notified, for she now 
 arrived and addressed herself to the tea-pot. Her greeting to her 
 niece did not differ materially from her manner of raising the lid 
 of this receptacle in order to glance at the contents : in neither 
 act was it becoming to make a show of avidity. Questioned 
 about her husband, she was unable to say that he was better ; 
 but the local doctor was with him, and much light was expected 
 from this gentleman's consultation with Sir Matthew Hope. 
 
 " I suppose you two ladies have made acquaintance 1 " she 
 said. " If you have not, I recommend you to do so ; for so long 
 as we continue Ralph and I to cluster about Mr. Touchett's 
 bed, you are not likely to have much society but each other." 
 
 "I know nothing about you but that you are a great 
 musician/' Isabel said to the visitor. 
 
 "There is a good deal more than that to know," Mrs. Touchett 
 affirmed, in her little dry tone. 
 
 " A very little of it, I am sure, will content Miss Archer ! " 
 the lady exclaimed, with a light laugh. " I am an old friend of 
 your aunt's I have lived much in Florence I am Madame 
 Merle." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 225 
 
 She made this last announcement as if she were referring to a 
 person of tolerably distinct identity. 
 
 For Isabel, however, it represented but little ; she could only 
 continue to feel that Madame Merle had a charming manner. 
 
 " She is not a foreigner, in spite of her name," said Mrs. 
 Touchett. " She was born I always forget where you were 
 born." 
 
 "It is hardly worth while I should tell you then." 
 
 " On the contrary," said Mrs. Touchett, who rarely missed a 
 logical point j " if I remembered, your telling me would be quite 
 superfluous." 
 
 Madame Merle glanced at Isabel with a fine, frank smile. 
 
 " I was born under the shadow of the national banner." 
 
 " She is too fond of mystery," said Mrs. Touchett ; " that is 
 her great fault." 
 
 " Ah," exclaimed Madame Merle, " I have great faults, but I 
 don't think that is one of them ; it certainly is not the greatest. 
 I came into the world in the Brooklyn navy-yard. My father 
 was a high officer in the United States navy, and had a post a 
 post of responsibility in that establishment at the time. I 
 suppose I ought to love the sea, but I hate it. That's why I 
 don't return to America. I love the land j the great thing is to 
 love something." 
 
 Isabel, as a dispassionate witness, had not been struck with 
 the force of Mrs. Touchett's characterisation of her visitor, who 
 had an expressive, communicative, responsive face, by no means 
 of the sort which, to Isabel's mind, suggested a secretive disposi- 
 tion. It was a face that told of a rich nature and of quick and 
 liberal impulses, and though it had no regular beauty was in the 
 highest degree agreeable to contemplate. 
 
 Madame Merle was a tall, fair, plump woman ; everything in 
 
 VOL. I. Q 
 
226 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 her person was round and replete, though without those accumu- 
 lations which minister to indolence. Her features were thick, 
 but there was a graceful harmony among them, and her com- 
 plexion had a healthy clearness. She had a small grey eye, with 
 a great deal of light in it an eye incapable of dulness, and, 
 according to some people, incapable of tears ; and a wide, firm 
 mouth, which, when she smiled, drew itself upward to the left 
 side, in a manner that most people thought very odd, some very 
 affected, and a few very graceful. Isabel inclined to range 
 herself in the last category. Madame Merle had thick, fair hair, 
 which was arranged with picturesque simplicity, and a large 
 white hand, of a perfect shape a shape so perfect that its 
 owner, preferring to leave it unadorned, wore no rings. Isabel 
 had taken her at first, as we have seen, for a Frenchwoman ; but 
 extended observation led her to say to herself that Madame 
 Merle might be a German a German of rank, a countess, a 
 princess. Isabel would never have supposed that she had been 
 born in Brooklyn though she could doubtless not have justified 
 her assumption that the air of distinction, possessed by Madame 
 Merle in so eminent a degree, was inconsistent with such a birth. 
 It was true that the national banner had floated immediately 
 over the spot of the lady's nativity, and the breezy freedom of 
 the stars and stripes might have shed an influence upon the 
 attitude which she then and there took towards life. And yet 
 Madame Merle had evidently nothing of the fluttered, flapping 
 quality of a morsel of bunting in the wind ; her deportment 
 expressed the repose and confidence which come from a large 
 experience. Experience, however, had not quenched her youth ; 
 it had simply made her sympathetic and supple. She was in a 
 word a woman of ardent impulses, kept in admirable order. 
 What an ideal combination ! thought Isabel. 
 
THE PORTKAIT OF A LADY. 227 
 
 She made these reflections while the three ladies sat at their 
 tea ; but this ceremony was interrupted before long by the arrival 
 of the great doctor from London, who had been immediately 
 ushered into the drawing-room. Mrs. Touchett took him off to 
 the library, to confer with him in private ; and then Madame 
 Merle and Isabel parted, to meet again at dinner. The idea of 
 seeing more of this interesting woman did much to mitigate 
 Isabel's perception of the melancholy that now hung over 
 Gardencourt. 
 
 When she came into the drawing-room before dinner she 
 found the place empty ; but in the course of a moment Ralph 
 arrived. His anxiety about his father had been lightened ; Sir 
 Matthew Hope's view of his condition was less sombre than 
 Ralph's had been. The doctor recommended that the nurse 
 alone should remain with the old man for the next three or four 
 hours ; so that Ralph, his mother, and the great physician him- 
 self, were free to dine at table. Mrs. Touchett and Sir Matthew 
 came in ; Madame Merle was the last to appear. 
 
 Before she came, Isabel spoke of her to Ralph, who was 
 standing before the fireplace. 
 
 " Pray who is Madame Merle ? " 
 
 " The cleverest woman I know, not excepting yourself," said 
 Ralph. 
 
 " I thought she seemed very pleasant." 
 
 " I was sure you would think her pleasant," said Ralph. 
 
 " Is that why you invited her 1 " 
 
 " I didn't invite her, and when we came back from London I 
 didn't know she was here. No one invited her. She is a friend 
 of my mother's, and just after you and I went to town, my 
 mother got a note from her. She had arrived in England (she 
 usually lives abroad, though she has first and last spent a good 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 deal of time here), and she asked leave to come down for a few 
 days. Madame Merle is a woman who can make such proposals 
 with perfect confidence ; she is so welcome wherever she goes. 
 And with my mother there could be no question of hesitating ; 
 she is the one person in the world whom my mother very much 
 admires. If she were not herself (which she after all much 
 prefers), she would like to be Madame Merle. It would, indeed, 
 be a great change." 
 
 " Well, she is very charming," said Isabel. " And she plays 
 beautifully." 
 
 " She does everything beautifully. She is complete." 
 
 Isabel looked at her cousin a moment. " You don't like her." 
 
 " On the contrary, I was once in love with her." 
 
 " And she didn't care for you, and that's why you don't like 
 her." 
 
 "How can we have discussed such things? M. Merle was 
 then living." 
 
 "Is he dead now?" 
 
 " So she says." 
 
 " Don't you believe her 1 " 
 
 " Yes, because the statement agrees with the probabilities. 
 The husband of Madame Merle would be likely to pass away." 
 
 Isabel gazed at her cousin again. " I don't know what you 
 mean. You mean something that you don't mean. What was 
 M. Merle 1 " 
 
 " The husband of Madame." 
 
 " You are very odious. Has she any children 1 " 
 
 11 Not the least little child fortunately." 
 
 "Fortunately?" 
 
 " I mean fortunately for the , child ; she would be sure to 
 spoil it." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 229 
 
 Isabel was apparently on the point of assuring her cousin for 
 the third time that he was odious ; but the discussion was inter- 
 rupted by the arrival of the lady who was the topic of it. She 
 came rustling in quickly, apologising for being late, fastening a 
 bracelet, dressed in dark blue satin, which exposed a white 
 bosom that was ineffectually covered by a curious silver necklace. 
 Ealph offered her his arm with the exaggerated alertness of a 
 man who was no longer a lover. 
 
 Even if this had still been his condition, however, Ralph had 
 other things to think about. The great doctor spent the night 
 at Gardencourt, and returning to London 1 on the morrow, after 
 another consultation with Mr. Touchett' s own medical adviser, 
 concurred in Ralph's desire that he should see the patient again 
 on the day following. On the day following Sir Matthew Hope 
 reappeared at Gardencourt, and on this occasion took a less 
 encouraging view of the old man, who had grown worse in the 
 twenty-four hours. His feebleness was extreme, and to his son, 
 who constantly sat by his bedside, it often seemed that his end 
 was at hand. The local doctor, who was a very sagacious man, 
 and in whom Ralph had secretly more confidence than in his 
 distinguished colleague, was constantly in attendance, and Sir 
 Matthew Hope returned several times to Gardencourt. Mr. 
 Touchett was much of the time unconscious ; he slept a great 
 deal ; he rarely spoke. Isabel had a great desire to be useful to 
 him, and was allowed to watch with him several times when 
 his other attendants (of whom Mrs. Touchett was not the least 
 regular) went to take rest. He never seemed to know her, and 
 she always said to herself " Suppose he should die while I am 
 sitting here " an idea which excited her and kept her awake. 
 Once he opened his eyes for a while and fixed them upon her 
 intelligently, but when she went to him, hoping he would recog- 
 
230 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 nise her, he closed them and relapsed into unconsciousness. 
 The day after this, however, he revived for a longer time ; but 
 on this occasion Ralph was with him alone. The old man began 
 to talk, much to his son's satisfaction, who assured him that they 
 should presently have him sitting up. 
 
 " No, my boy," said Mr. Touchett, " not unless you bury me 
 in a sitting posture, as some of the ancients was it the ancients 1 
 used to do." 
 
 " Ah,<daddy, don't talk about that," Ralph murmured. " You 
 must not deny that you are getting better." 
 
 " There will be no need of my denying it if you don't say so," 
 the old man answered. " Why should we prevaricate, just at 
 the last? We never prevaricated before. I have got to die 
 some time, and it's better to die when one is sick than when 
 one is well. I am very sick as sick as I shall ever be. I hope 
 you don't want to prove that I shall ever be worse than this 1 
 That would be too bad. You don't? Well then." 
 
 Having made this excellent point he became quiet ; but the 
 next time that Ralph was with him he again addressed himself 
 to conversation. The nurse had gone to her supper and Ralph 
 was alone with him, having just relieved Mrs, Touchett, who 
 had been on guard since dinner. The room was lighted only by 
 the nickering fire, which of late had become necessary, and 
 Ralph's tall shadow was projected upon the wall and ceiling, 
 with an outline constantly varying but always grotesque. 
 
 " Who is that with me is it my son 1 " the old man asked. 
 
 " Yes, it's your son, daddy." 
 
 " And is there no one else 1 " 
 
 " No one else." 
 
 Mr. Touchett said nothing for a while ; and then, " I want to 
 talk a little," he went on. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 231 
 
 " Won't it tire you ? " Ralph inquired. 
 
 " It won't matter if it does. I shall have a long rest. I want 
 to talk about you." 
 
 Ealph had drawn nearer to the bed ; he sat leaning forward, 
 with his hand on his father's. "You had better select a 
 brighter topic," he said. 
 
 "You were always bright; I used to be proud of your 
 brightness. I should like so much to think that you would do 
 something." 
 
 "If you leave us," said Ralph, " I shall do nothing but miss you." 
 
 "That is just what I don't want; it's what I want to talk 
 about. You must get a new interest." 
 
 " I don't want a new interest, daddy. I have more old ones 
 than I know what to do with." 
 
 The old man lay there looking at his son ; his face was the 
 face of the dying, but his eyes were the eyes of Daniel Touchett. 
 He seemed to be reckoning over Ralph's interests. " Of course 
 you have got your mother," he said at last. " You will take care 
 of her." 
 
 " My mother will always take care of herself," Ralph an- 
 swered. 
 
 " Well," said his father, " perhaps as she grows older she will 
 need a little help." 
 
 " I shall not see that. She will outlive me." 
 
 " Very likely she will ; but that's no reason " Mr. Touchett 
 let his phrase die away in a helpless but not exactly querulous 
 sigh, and remained silent again. 
 
 "Don't trouble yourself about us," said his son. "My 
 mother and I get on very well together, you know." 
 
 " You get on by always being apart ; that's not natural." 
 
 " If you leave us, we shall probably see more of each other." 
 
232 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Well," the old man observed, with wandering irrelevance, 
 " it cannot be said that my death will make much difference in 
 your mother's life." 
 
 "It will probably make more than you think." 
 
 "Well, she'll have more money," said Mr. Touchett. "I 
 have left her a good wife's portion, just as if she had been a good 
 wife." 
 
 " She has been one, daddy, according to her own theory. 
 She has never troubled you." 
 
 "Ah, some troubles are pleasant," Mr. Touchett murmured. 
 " Those you have given me, for instance. But your mother has 
 been less less what shall I call it 1 less 'out of the way since 
 I have been ill. I presume she knows I have noticed it." 
 
 " I shall certainly tell her so ; I am so glad you mention it." 
 
 " It won't make any difference to her ; she doesn't do it to 
 please me. She does it to please to please " And he lay 
 a while, trying to think why she did it. " She does it to 
 please herself. But that is not what I want to talk about," he 
 added. " It's about you. You will be very well off." 
 
 " Yes," said Ralph, " I know that. But I hope you have not 
 forgotten the talk we had a year ago when I told you exactly 
 what money I should need and begged you to make some good 
 use of the rest." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I remember. I made a new will in a few days. 
 I suppose it was the first time such a thing had happened a 
 young man trying to get a will made against him." 
 
 " It is not against me," said Ralph. " It would be against 
 me to have a large property to take care of. It is impossible for 
 a man in my state of health to spend much money, and enough 
 is as good as a feast." 
 
 " Well, you will have enough ancl something over. There 
 
THE PORTKAIT OF A LADY. 233 
 
 will be more than enough for one there will be enough for 
 two." 
 
 " That's too much," said Ealph. 
 
 " Ah, don't say that. The best thing you can do, when I am 
 gone, will be to marry." 
 
 Ealph had foreseen what his father was coming to, and this 
 suggestion was by no means novel. It had long been Mr. 
 Touchett's most ingenious way of expressing the optimistic view 
 of his son's health. Ealph had usually treated it humorously ; 
 but present circumstances made the humorous tone impossible. 
 He simply fell back in his chair and returned his father's appeal- 
 ing gaze in silence. 
 
 "If I, with a wife who hasn't been very fond of me, have 
 had a very happy life," said the old man, carrying his ingenuity 
 further still, " what a life might you not have, if you should 
 marry a person different from Mrs. Touchett. There are more 
 different from her than there are like her." 
 
 Ealph still said nothing ; and after a pause his father asked 
 softly " What do you think of your cousin ? " 
 
 At this Ealph started, meeting the question with a rather 
 fixed smile. " Do I understand you to propose that I should 
 marry Isabel 1 " 
 
 " Well; that's what it comes to in the end. Don't you like 
 her?" 
 
 " Yes, very much." And Ealph got up from his chair and 
 wandered over to the fire. He stood before it an instant and 
 then he stooped and stirred it, mechanically. " I like Isabel 
 very much," he repeated. 
 
 " Well," said his father, " I know she likes you. She told 
 me so." 
 
 " Did she remark that she would like to marry me 1 " 
 
234 THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " No, but she can't have anything against you. And she is 
 the most charming young lady I have ever seen. And she 
 would be good to you. I have thought a great deal about it." 
 
 " So have I," said Ralph, coming back to the bedside again. 
 " I don't mind telling you that." 
 
 " You are in love with her, then 1 I should think you would 
 be. It's as if she came over on purpose." 
 
 " No, I am not in love with her ; but I should be if if 
 certain things were different." 
 
 " Ah, things are always different from what they might be," 
 said the old man. " If you wait for them to change, you will 
 never do anything. I don't know whether you know," he went 
 on ; " but I suppose there is no harm in my alluding to it in 
 such an hour as this : there was some one wanted to marry 
 Isabel the other day, and she wouldn't have him." 
 
 " I know she refused Lord Warburton ; he told me himself." 
 
 " Well, that proves that there is a chance for somebody else." 
 
 " Somebody else took his chance the other day in London 
 and got nothing by it." 
 
 "Was it you?" Mr. Touchett asked, eagerly. 
 
 " No, it was an older friend ; a poor gentleman who came 
 over from America* to see about it." 
 
 " Well, I am sorry for him. But it only proves what I say 
 that the way is open to you." 
 
 "If it is, dear father, it is all the greater pity that I am 
 unable to tread it. I haven't many convictions ; but I have 
 three or four that I hold strongly. One is that people, on the 
 whole, had better not marry their cousins. Another is, that 
 people in an advanced stage of pulmonary weakness had better 
 not marry at all." 
 
 The old man raised his feeble hand and moved it to and fro 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 235 
 
 a little before his face. " What do you mean by that 1 You 
 look at things in a way that would make everything wrong. 
 What sort of a cousin is a cousin that you have never seen for 
 more than twenty years of her life ] We are all each other's 
 cousins, and if we stopped at that the human race would die 
 out. It is just the same with your weak lungs. You are a 
 great deal better than you used to be. All you want is to lead 
 a natural life. It is a great deal more natural to marry a pretty 
 young lady that you are in love with than it is to remain single 
 on false principles." 
 
 " I am not in love with Isabel," said Ralph. 
 
 "You said just now that you would be if you didn't think it 
 was wrong. I want to prove to you that it isn't wrong." 
 
 " It will only tire you, dear daddy," said Ralph, who mar- 
 velled at his father's tenacity and at his finding strength to 
 insist. " Then where shall we all be ? " 
 
 " Where shall you be if I don't provide for you 1 ? You won't 
 have anything to do with the bank, and you won't have me to 
 take care of. You say you have got so many interests ; but I 
 can't make them out." 
 
 Ralph leaned back in his chair, with folded arms ; his eyes 
 were fixed for some time in meditation. At last, with the air 
 of a man fairly mustering courage " I take a great interest in 
 my cousin," he said, " but not the sort of interest you desire. 
 I shall not live many years ; but I hope I shall live long enough 
 to see what she does with herself. She is entirely independent 
 of me ; I can exercise very little influence upon her life. But 
 I should like to do something for her." 
 
 " What should you like to do 1 " 
 
 " I should like to put a little wind in her sails." 
 
 " What do you mean by that 1 " 
 
236 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " I should like to put it into her power to do some of the 
 things she wants. She wants to see the world, for instance. I 
 should like to put money in her purse." 
 
 " Ah, I am glad you have thought of that," said the old man. 
 " But I have thought of it too. I have left her a legacy five 
 thousand pounds." 
 
 " That is capital ; it is very kind of you. But I should like 
 to do a little more." 
 
 Something of that veiled acuteness with which it had been, 
 on Daniel Touchett's part, the habit of a lifetime to listen to a 
 financial proposition, still lingered in the face in which the 
 invalid had not obliterated the man of business. " I shall be 
 happy to consider it," he said, softly. 
 
 " Isabel is poor, then. My mother tells me that she has but 
 a few hundred dollars a year. I should like to make her rich." 
 
 " What do you mean by rich 1 " 
 
 " I call people rich when they are able to gratify their imagin- 
 ation. Isabel has a great deal of imagination." 
 
 " So have you, my son," said Mr. Touchett, listening very 
 attentively, but a little confusedly. 
 
 " You tell me I shall have money enough for two. What I 
 want is that you should kindly relieve me of my superfluity 
 and give it to Isabel. Divide my inheritance into two equal 
 halves, and give the second half to her." 
 
 " To do what she likes with ? " 
 
 " Absolutely what she likes." 
 
 " And without an equivalent 1 " 
 
 " What equivalent could there be 1 " 
 
 " The one I have already mentioned." 
 
 "Her marrying some one or other? It's just to do away 
 with anything of that sort that I make my suggestion. If she 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 237 
 
 has an easy income she will never have to marry for a sup- 
 port. She wishes to be free, and your bequest will make her 
 free." 
 
 " Well, you seem to have thought it out," said Mr. Touchett. 
 " But I don't see why you appeal to me. The money will be 
 yours, and you can easily give it to her yourself." 
 
 Ralph started a little. " Ah, dear father, I can't offer Isabel 
 money ! " 
 
 The old man gave a groan. "Don't tell me you are not 
 in love with her ! Do you want me to have the credit of 
 it?" 
 
 " Entirely. I should like it simply to be a clause in your 
 will, without the slightest reference to me." 
 
 " Do you want me to make a new will, then 1 " 
 
 " A few words will do it \ you can attend to it the next time 
 you feel a little lively." 
 
 " You must telegraph to Mr. Hilary, then. I will do nothing 
 without my solicitor." 
 
 " You shall see Mr. Hilary to-morrow." 
 
 " He will think we have quarrelled, you and I," said the old 
 man. 
 
 " Very probably j I shall like him to think it," said Ealph, 
 smiling ; " and to carry out the idea, I give you notice that I 
 shall be very sharp with you." 
 
 The humour of this appeared to touch his father ; he lay a 
 little while taking it in. 
 
 " I will do anything you like," he said at last ; " but I'm not 
 sure it's right. You say you want to put wind in her sails ; 
 but aren't you afraid of putting too much 1 ? " 
 
 " I should like to see her going before the breeze ! " Ralph 
 answered. 
 
238 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " You speak as if it were for your entertainment." 
 
 " So it is, a good deal." 
 
 " Well, I don't think I understand," said Mr. Touchett, with 
 a sigh. " Young men are very different from what I was. 
 When I cared for a girl when I was young I wanted to do 
 more than look at her. You have scruples that I shouldn't have 
 had, and you have ideas that I shouldn't have had either. You 
 say that Isabel wants to be free, and that her being rich will 
 keep her from marrying for money. Do you think that she is 
 a girl to do that 1 " 
 
 " By no means. But she has less money than she has ever 
 had before ; her father gave her everything, because he used to 
 spend his capital. She has nothing but the crumbs of that 
 feast to live on, and she doesn't really know how meagre they 
 are she has yet to learn it. My mother has told me all about 
 it. Isabel will learn it when she is really thrown upon the 
 world, and it would be very painful to me to think of her 
 coming to the consciousness of a lot of wants that she should be 
 unable to satisfy." 
 
 " I have left her five thousand pounds. She can satisfy a 
 good many wants with that." 
 
 " She can indeed. But she would probably spend it in two 
 or three years." 
 
 " You think she would be extravagant then ? " 
 
 " Most certainly," said Ealph, smiling serenely. 
 
 Poor Mr. Touchett's acuteness was rapidly giving place to 
 pure confusion. " It would merely be a question of time, then, 
 her spending the larger sum 1 " 
 
 " No, at first I think she would plunge into that pretty 
 freely ; she would probably make over a part of it to each of 
 her sisters. But Rafter that she would come to her senses, 
 
THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 239 
 
 remember that she had still a lifetime before her, and live 
 within her means." 
 
 " Well, you have worked it out," said the old man, with a 
 sigh. "You do take an interest in her, certainly." 
 
 " You can't consistently say I go too far. You wished me to 
 go further." 
 
 "Well, I don't know," the old man answered. "I don't 
 think I enter into your spirit. It seems to me immoral." 
 
 " Immoral, dear daddy ? " 
 
 " Well, I don't know that it's right to make everything so 
 easy for a person." 
 
 " It surely depends upon the person. When the person is 
 good, your making things easy is all to the credit of virtue. To 
 facilitate the execution of good impulses, what can be a nobler 
 acU" 
 
 This was a little difficult to follow, and Mr. Touchett con- 
 sidered it for a while. At last he said 
 
 " Isabel is a sweet young girl ; but do you think she is as 
 good as that?" 
 
 " She is as good as her best opportunities," said Ralph. 
 
 "Well," Mr. Touchett declared, "she ought to get a great 
 many opportunities for sixty thousand pounds." 
 
 "I have no doubt she will." 
 
 " Of course I will do what you want," said the old man. " I 
 only want to understand it a little." 
 
 "Well, dear daddy, don't you understand it now?" his son 
 asked, caressingly. "If you don't, we won't take any more 
 trouble about it ; we will leave it alone." 
 
 Mr. Touchett lay silent a long time. Ralph supposed that 
 he had given up the attempt to understand it. But at last he 
 began again 
 
240 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Tell me this first. Doesn't it occur to you that a young 
 lady with sixty thousand pounds may fall a victim to the 
 fortune-hunters 1 " 
 
 " She will hardly fall a victim to more than one." 
 
 " Well, one is too many." 
 
 "Decidedly. That's a risk, and it has entered into my 
 calculation. I think it's appreciable, but I think it's small, 
 and I am prepared to take it." 
 
 Poor Mr. Touchett's acuteness had passed into perplexity, 
 and his perplexity now passed into admiration. 
 
 " Well, you have gone into it ! " he exclaimed. " But I don't 
 see what good you are to get of it." 
 
 Ealph leaned over his father's pillows and gently smoothed 
 them ; he was aware that their conversation had been prolonged 
 to a dangerous point. "I shall get just the good that I said 
 just now I wished to put into Isabel's reach that of having 
 gratified my imagination. But it's scandalous, the way I have 
 taken advantage of you ! " 
 
THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 241 
 
 XIX. 
 
 As Mrs. Touchett had foretold, Isabel and Madame Merle 
 were thrown much together during the illness of their host, and 
 if they had not become intimate it would have been almost a 
 breach of good manners. Their manners were of the best ; but 
 in addition to this they happened to please each other. It is 
 perhaps too much to say that they swore an eternal friendship ; 
 but tacitly, at least, they called the future to witness. Isabel 
 did so with a perfectly good conscience, although she would 
 have hesitated to admit that she was intimate with her new 
 friend in the sense which she privately attached to this term. 
 She often wondered, indeed, whether she ever had been, or ever 
 could be, intimate with any one. She had an ideal of friend- 
 ship, as well as of several other sentiments, and it did not seem 
 to her in this case it had not seemed to her in other cases 
 that the actual completely expressed it. But she often reminded 
 herself that there were essential reasons why one's ideal could 
 not become concrete. It was a thing to believe in, not to see 
 a matter of faith, not of experience. Experience, however, 
 might supply us with very creditable imitations of it, and the 
 part of wisdom was to make the best of these. Certainly, on 
 the whole, Isabel had never encountered a more agreeable and 
 interesting woman than Madame Merle ; she had never met a 
 
 VOL. I. R 
 
242 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 woman who had less of that fault which is the principal obstacle 
 to friendship the air of reproducing the more tiresome parts of 
 one's own personality. The gates of the girl's confidence were 
 opened wider than they had ever been; she said things to 
 Madame Merle that she had not yet said to any one. Sometimes 
 she took alarm at her candour ; it was as if she had given to a 
 comparative stranger the key to her cabinet of jewels. These 
 spiritual gems were the only ones of any magnitude that Isabel 
 possessed ; but that was all the greater reason why they should 
 be carefully guarded. Afterwards, however, the girl always said - 
 to herself that one should never regret a generous error, and that 
 if Madame Merle had not the merits she attributed to her, so 
 much the worse for Madame Merle. There was no doubt she 
 had great merits she was a charming, sympathetic, intelligent, 
 cultivated woman. More than this (for it had not been Isabel's 
 ill-fortune to go through life without meeting several persons of 
 her own sex, of whom no less could fairly be said), she was rare, 
 she was superior, she was pre-eminent. There are a great many 
 amiable people in the world, and Madame Merle was far from 
 being vulgarly good-natured and restlessly witty. She knew 
 how to think an accomplishment rare in women ; and she had 
 thought to very good purpose. Of course, too, she knew how 
 to feel ; Isabel could not have spent a week with her without 
 being sure of that. This was, indeed, Madame Merle's great 
 talent, her most perfect gift. Life had told upon her ; she had 
 felt it strongly, and it was part of the satisfaction that Isabel 
 found in her society that when the girl talked of what she was 
 pleased to call serious matters, her companion understood her so 
 easily and quickly. Emotion, it is true, had become with her 
 rather historic \ she made no secret of the fact that the fountain 
 of sentiment, thanks to having been rather violently tapped at 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 243 
 
 one period, did not flow quite so freely as of yore. Her pleasure 
 was now to judge rather than to feel ; she freely admitted that 
 of old she had been rather foolish, and now she pretended to 
 be wise. 
 
 " I judge more than I used to/' she said to Isabel ; " but it 
 seems to me that I have earned the right. One can't judge till 
 one is forty ; before that we are too eager, too hard, too cruel, 
 and in addition too ignorant. I am sorry for you ; it will be a 
 long time before you are forty. But every gain is a loss of 
 some kind ; I often think that after forty one can't really feel. 
 The freshness, the quickness have certainly gone. You will 
 keep them longer than most people ; it will be a great satis- 
 faction to me to see you some years hence. I want to see 
 what life makes of you. One thing is certain it can't spoil 
 you. It may pull you about horribly ; but I defy it to break 
 you up." 
 
 Isabel received this assurance as a young soldier, still panting 
 from a slight skirmish in which he has come off with honour, 
 might receive a pat on the shoulder from his colonel. Like such 
 a recognition of merit, it seemed to come with authority. How 
 could the lightest word do less, of a person who was prepared to 
 say, of almost everything Isabel told her " Oh, I have been in 
 that, my dear ; it passes, like everything else. " Upon many of 
 her interlocutors, Madame Merle might have produced an irritat- 
 ing effect ; it was so difficult to surprise her. But Isabel, though 
 by no means incapable of desiring to be effective, had not at 
 present this motive. She was too sincere, too interested in her 
 judicious companion. And then, moreover, Madame Merle 
 never said such things in the tone of triumph or of boastfulness ; 
 they dropped from her like grave confessions. 
 
 A period of bad weather had settled down upon Gardencourt ; 
 
 R 2 
 
244 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 the days grew shorter, and there was an end to the pretty tea- 
 parties on the lawn. But Isabel had long in-door conversations 
 with her fellow-visitor, and in spite of the rain the two ladies 
 often sallied forth for a walk, equipped with the defensive 
 apparatus which the English climate and the English genius 
 have between them brought to such perfection. Madame Merle 
 was very appreciative; she liked almost everything, including 
 the English rain. " There is always a little of it, and never too 
 much at once," she said ; " and it never wets you, and it always 
 smells good." She declared that in England the pleasures of 
 smell were great that in this inimitable island there was a 
 certain mixture of fog and beer and soot which, however odd it 
 might sound, was the national aroma, and was most agreeable to 
 the nostril ; and she used to lift the sleeve of her British over- 
 coat and bury her nose in it, to inhale the clear, fine odour of 
 the wool. Poor Ralph Touchett, as soon as the autumn had 
 begun to define itself, became almost a prisoner ; in bad weather 
 he was unable to step out of the house, and he used sometimes 
 to stand at one of the windows, with his hands in his pockets, 
 and, with a countenance half rueful, half critical, watch Isabel 
 and Madame Merle as they walked down the avenue under a 
 pair of umbrellas. The roads about Gardencourt were so firm, 
 even in the worst weather, that the two ladies always came back 
 with a healthy glow in their cheeks, looking at the soles of their 
 neat, stout boots, and declaring that their walk had done them 
 inexpressible good. Before lunch Madame Merle was always 
 engaged; Isabel admired the inveteracy with which she occupied 
 herself. Our heroine had always passed for a person of resources 
 and had taken a certain pride in being one ; but she envied the 
 talents, the accomplishments, the aptitudes, of Madame Merle. 
 She found herself desiring to emulate them, and in this and 
 
1 THE PORTEAIT OF A LADY. 245 
 
 other ways Madame Merle presented herself as a model. " I 
 should like to be like that ! " Isabel secretly exclaimed, more 
 than once, as one of her friend's numerous facets suddenly caught 
 the light, and before long she knew that she had learned a lesson 
 from this exemplary woman. It took no very long time, indeed, 
 for Isabel to feel that she was, as the phrase is, under an in- 
 fluence. " What is the harm," she asked herself, " so long as 
 it is a good one 1 The more one is under a good influence the 
 better. ' The only thing is to see our steps as we take them to 
 understand them as we go. That I think I shall always do. 
 I needn't be afraid of becoming too pliable ; it is my fault that 
 I am not pliable enough." It is said that imitation is the 
 sincerest flattery; and if Isabel was tempted to reproduce in 
 her deportment some of the most graceful features of that of her 
 friend, it was not so much because she desired to shine herself 
 as because she wished to hold up the lamp for Madame Merle. 
 She liked her extremely ; but she admired her even more than 
 she liked her. She sometimes wondered what Henrietta Stack- 
 pole would say to her thinking so much of this brilliant fugitive 
 from Brooklyn; and had a conviction that Henrietta would 
 not approve of it. Henrietta would not like Madame Merle ; 
 for reasons that she could not have defined, this truth came 
 home to Isabel. On the other hand she was equally sure that 
 should the occasion offer, her new friend would accommodate 
 herself perfectly to her old ; Madame Merle was too humorous, 
 too observant, not to do justice to Henrietta, and on becoming 
 acquainted with her would probably give the measure of a tact 
 which Miss Stackpole could not hope to emulate. She appeared 
 to have, in her experience, a touchstone for everything, and 
 somewhere in the capacious pocket of her genial memory she 
 would find the key to Henrietta's virtues. " That is .the great 
 
246 THE PORTBAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 thing," Isabel reflected ; " that is the supreme good fortune : to 
 be in a better position for appreciating people than they are for 
 appreciating you." And she added that this, when one con- 
 sidered it, was simply the essence of the aristocratic situation. 
 In this light, if in none other, one should aim at the aristocratic 
 situation. 
 
 I cannot enumerate all the links in the chain which led 
 Isabel to think of Madame Merle's situation as aristocratic a 
 view of it never expressed in any reference made to it by that 
 lady herself. She had known great things and great people, 
 but she had never played a great part. She was one of the 
 small ones of the earth ; she had not been born to honours ; 
 she knew the world too well to be guilty of any fatuous 
 illusions on the subject of her own place in it. She had known 
 a good many of the fortunate few, and was perfectly aware of 
 those points at which their fortune differed from hers. But if 
 by her own measure she was nothing of a personage, she had 
 yet, to Isabel's imagination, a sort of greatness. To be so 
 graceful, so gracious, so wise, so good, and to make so light of it 
 all that was really to be a great lady ; especially when one 
 looked so much like one. If Madame Merle, however, made 
 light of her advantages as regards the world, it was not because 
 she had not, for her own entertainment, taken them, as I have 
 intimated, as seriously as possible. Her natural talents, for 
 instance; these she had zealously cultivated. After breakfast 
 she wrote a succession of letters; her correspondence was a 
 source of surprise to Isabel when they sometimes walked 
 together to the village post-office, to deposit Madame Merle's 
 contribution to the mail. She knew a multitude of people, 
 and, as she told Isabel, something was always turning up to be 
 written about. Of painting she was devotedly fond, and made 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 247 
 
 no more of taking a sketch than of pulling off her gloves. At 
 Gardencourt she was perpetually taking advantage of an hour's 
 sunshine to go out with a camp-stool and a box of water-colours. 
 That she was a brilliant musician we have already perceived, 
 and it was evidence of the fact that when she seated herself at 
 the piano, as she always did in the evening, her listeners 
 resigned themselves without a murmur to losing the entertain- 
 ment of her talk. Isabel, since she had known Madame Merle, 
 felt ashamed of her own playing, which she now looked upon as 
 meagre and artless ; and indeed, though she had been thought 
 to play very well, the loss to society when, in taking her place 
 upon the music-stool, she turned her back to the room, was 
 usually deemed greater than the gain. When Madame Merle 
 was neither writing, nor painting, nor touching the piano, she 
 was usually employed upon wonderful morsels of picturesque 
 embroidery, cushions, curtains, decorations for the chimney- 
 piece ; a sort of work in which her bold, free invention was as 
 remarkable as the agility of her needle. She was never idle, 
 for when she was engaged in none of the ways I have mentioned, 
 she was either reading (she appeared to Isabel to read everything 
 important), or walking out, or playing patience with the cards, 
 or talking with her fellow inmates. And with all this, she 
 always had the social quality ; she never was preoccupied, she 
 never pressed too hard. She laid down her pastimes as easily 
 as she took them up ; she worked and talked at the same time, 
 and she appeared to attach no importance to anything she did. 
 She gave- away her sketches and tapestries ; she rose from the 
 piano, or remained there, according to the convenience of her 
 auditors, which she always unerringly divined. She was, in 
 short, a most comfortable, profitable, agreeable person to live 
 with. If for Isabel she had a fault, it was that she was not 
 
248 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 natural ; by which the girl meant, not that she was affected or 
 pretentious ; for from these vulgar vices no woman could have 
 been more exempt ; but that her nature had been too much over- 
 laid by custom and her angles too much smoothed. She had 
 become- too flexible, too supple ; she was too finished, too civilised. 
 She was, in a word, too perfectly the social animal that v man 
 and woman are supposed to have been intended to be"; and she 
 had rid herself of every remnant of that tonic wildness which 
 we may assume to have belonged even to the most amiable 
 persons in the ages before country-house life was the fashion. 
 Isabel found it difficult to think of Madame Merle as an isolated 
 figure ; she existed only in her relations with her fellow-mortals. 
 Isabel often wondered what her relations might be with her own 
 soul. She always ended, however, by feeling that having a 
 charming surface does not necessarily prove that one is super- 
 ficial ; this was an illusion in which, in her youth, she had only 
 just sufficiently escaped being nourished. Madame Merle was 
 not superficial not she. She was deep ; and her nature spoke 
 none the less in her behaviour because it spoke a conventional 
 language. " What is language at all but a convention 1 " said 
 Isabel. " She has the good taste not to pretend, like some 
 people I have met, fo express herself by original signs." 
 
 "I am afraid you have suffered much," Isabel once found 
 occasion to say to her, in response to some allusion that she had 
 dropped. 
 
 ""What makes you think that?" Madame Merle asked, with 
 a picturesque smile. " I hope I have not the pose of a 
 martyr." 
 
 " No ; but you sometimes say things that I think people who 
 have always been happy would not have found out." 
 
 "I have not always been happy," said Madame Merle, 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 249 
 
 smiling still, but with a mock gravity, as if she were telling a 
 child a secret. " What a wonderful thing ! " 
 
 " A great many people give me the impression of never having 
 felt anything very much," Isabel answered. 
 
 " It's very true ; there are more iron pots, I think, than 
 porcelain ones. But you may depend upon it that every one has 
 something; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a 
 little hole, somewhere. I flatter myself that I am rather stout 
 porcelain ; but if I must tell you the truth I have been chipped 
 and cracked ! I do very well for service yet, because I have 
 been cleverly mended ; and I try to remain in the cupboard 
 the quiet, dusky cupboard, where there is an odour of stale 
 spices as much as I can. But when I have to come out, and 
 into a strong light, then, my dear, I am a horror ! " 
 
 I know not whether it was on this occasion or some other, 
 that when the conversation had taken the turn I have just indi- 
 cated, she said to Isabel that some day she would relate her 
 history. Isabel assured her that she should delight to listen to 
 it, and reminded her more than once of this engagement. 
 Madame Merle, however, appeared to desire a postponement, 
 and at last frankly told the young girl that she must wait till 
 they knew each other better. This would certainly happen ; a 
 long friendship lay before them. Isabel assented, but at the 
 same time asked Madame Merle if she could not trust her 
 if she feared a betrayal of confidence. 
 
 " It is not that I am afraid of your repeating what I say," the 
 elder lady answered ; "I am afraid, on the contrary, of your 
 taking it too much to yourself. You" would judge me too 
 harshly; you are of the cruel age." She preferred for the pre- 
 sent to talk to Isabel about Isabel, and exhibited the greatest 
 interest in our heroine's history, her sentiments, opinions, 
 
250 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 prospects. She made her chatter, and listened to her chatter 
 with inexhaustible sympathy and good nature. In all this there 
 was something flattering to the girl, who knew that Madame 
 Merle knew a great many distinguished people, and had lived, 
 as Mrs. Touchett said, in the best company in Europe. Isabel 
 thought the better of herself for enjoying the favour of a person 
 who had so large a field of comparison j and it was perhaps 
 partly to gratify this sense of profiting by comparison that she 
 often begged her friend to tell her about the people she 
 knew. Madame Merle had been a dweller in many lands, 
 and had social ties in a dozen different countries. " I don't 
 pretend to be learned," she would say, "but I think I know 
 my Europe;" and she spoke one day of going to Sweden to 
 stay with an old friend, and another of going to Wallachia to 
 follow up a new acquaintance. With England, where she 
 had often stayed, she was thoroughly familiar ; and for Isabel's 
 benefit threw a great deal of light upon the customs of the 
 country and the character of the people, who "after all," 
 as she was fond of saying, were the finest people in the 
 world. 
 
 " You must not think it strange, her staying in the house at 
 such a time as th?s, when Mr. Touchett is passing away," Mrs. 
 Touchett remarked to Isabel. " She is incapable of doing anything 
 indiscreet ; she is the best-bred woman I know. It's a favour 
 to me that she stays ; she is putting off a lot of visits at great 
 houses," said Mrs. Touchett, who never forgot that when she 
 herself was in England her social value sank two or three 
 degrees in the scale. " She has her pick of places ; she is not 
 in want of a shelter. But I have asked her to stay because I 
 wish you to know her. I think it will be a good thing for you. 
 Serena Merle has no faults." 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 251 
 
 " If I didn't already like her very much that description 
 might alarm me," Isabel said. 
 
 " She never does anything wrong. I have brought you out 
 here, and I wish to do the best for you. Your sister Lily told 
 me that she hoped I would give you plenty of opportunities. I 
 give you one in securing Madame Merle. She is one of the most 
 brilliant women in Europe." 
 
 " I like her better than I like your description of her," Isabel 
 persisted in saying. 
 
 "Do you natter yourself that you will find a fault in her 1 I 
 hope you will let me know when you do." 
 
 " That will be cruel to you," said Isabel. 
 
 " You needn't mind me. You never will find one." 
 
 " Perhaps not ; but I think I shall not miss it." 
 
 " She is always up to the mark ! " said Mrs. Touchett. 
 
 Isabel after this said to Madame Merle that she hoped she 
 knew Mrs. Touchett believed she had not a fault. 
 
 " I am obliged to you, but I am afraid your aunt has no per- 
 ception of spiritual things," Madame Merle answered. 
 
 " Do you mean by that that you have spiritual faults ? " 
 
 " Ah no ; I mean nothing so flat ! I mean that having no 
 faults, for your aunt, means that one is never late for dinner 
 that is, for her dinner. I was not late, by the way, the other 
 day, when you came back from London ; the clock was just at 
 eight when I came into the drawing-room; it was the rest of 
 you that were before the time. It means that one answers a 
 letter the day one gets it, and that when one comes to stay with 
 her one doesn't bring too much luggage, and is careful not to be 
 taken ill. For Mrs. Touchett those things constitute virtue ; it's 
 a blessing to be able to reduce it to its elements." 
 
 Madame Merle's conversation, it will be perceived, was enriched 
 
252 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 with bold, free touches of criticism, which, even when they had 
 a restrictive effect, never struck Isabel as ill-natured. It never 
 occurred to the girl, for instance, that Mrs. Touchett's accom- 
 plished guest was abusing her ; and this for very good reasons. 
 In the first place Isabel agreed with her ; in the second Madame 
 Merle implied that there was a great deal more to say ; and in 
 the third, to speak to one without ceremony of one's near 
 relations was an agreeable sign of intimacy. These signs of 
 intimacy multiplied as the days elapsed, and there was none of 
 which Isabel was more sensible than of her companion's prefer- 
 ence for making Miss Archer herself a topic. Though she 
 alluded frequently to the incidents of her own life, she never 
 lingered upon them ; she was as little of an egotist as she was of 
 a gossip. 
 
 " I am old, and stale, and faded," she said more than once ; 
 " I am of no more interest than last week's newspaper. You are 
 young and fresh, and of to-day ; you have the great thing you 
 have actuality. I once had it we all have it for an hour. You, 
 however, will have it for longer. Let us talk about you, then ; 
 you can say nothing that I shall not care to hear. It is a sign 
 that I am growing old that I like to talk with younger people. 
 I think it's a very 'pretty compensation. If we can't have youth 
 within us we can have it outside of us, and I really think we see 
 it and feel it better that way. Of course we must be in sympathy 
 with it that I shall always be. I don't know that I shall ever 
 be ill-natured with old people I hope not ; there are certainly 
 some old people that I adore. But I shall never be ill-natured with 
 the young ; they touch me too much. I give you carte blanche, 
 then ; you can even be impertinent if you like ; I shall let it 
 pass. I talk as if I were a hundred years old, you say 1 "Well, 
 I am, if you please ; I was born before the French Eevolution. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 253 
 
 Ah, my dear je viens de loin; I belong to the old world. But 
 
 it is not of that I wish to talk ; I wish to talk about the new. 
 
 You must tell me more about America; you never tell me 
 
 enough. Here I have been since I was brought here as a helpless 
 
 child, and it is ridiculous, or rather it's scandalous, how little I 
 
 know about the land of my birth. There are a great many of us 
 
 like that, over here ; and I must say I think we are a wretched 
 
 set of people. You should live in your own country ; whatever 
 
 it may be you have your natural place there. If we are not 
 
 good Americans we are certainly poor Europeans ; we have no 
 
 natural place here. We are mere parasites, crawling over the 
 
 surface ; we haven't our feet in the soil. At least one can know 
 
 it, and not have illusions. A woman, perhaps, can get on; a 
 
 woman, it seems to me, has no natural place anywhere ; where- 
 
 ever she finds herself she has to remain on the surface and, more 
 
 or less, to crawl. You protest, my dear? you are horrified'? you 
 
 declare you will never crawl ? It is very true that I don't see 
 
 you crawling ; you stand more upright than a good many poor 
 
 creatures. Very good; on the whole, I don't think you will 
 
 crawl. But the men, the Americans ; je vous demande un pen, 
 
 what do they make of it over here 1 I don't envy them, trying 
 
 to arrange themselves. Look at poor Ealph Touchett ; what 
 
 sort of a figure do you call that? Fortunately he has got a 
 
 consumption ; I say fortunately, because it gives him something 
 
 to do. His consumption is his career ; it's a kind of position^ 
 
 You can say, ' Oh, Mr. Touchett, he takes care of Jiis lungs, he 
 
 knows a great deal about climates.' But without that, who 
 
 would he be, what would he represent ? ' Mr. Ralph Touchett, 
 
 an American who lives in Europe.' That signifies absolutely 
 
 nothing it's impossible that anything should signify less. ' He 
 
 is very cultivated,' they say ; ' he has got a very pretty collection 
 
254 THE POKTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 of old snuff-boxes.' The collection is all that is wanted to make 
 it pitiful. I am tired of the sound of the word ; I think it's 
 grotesque. With the poor old father it's different ; he has his 
 identity, and it is rather a massive one. He represents a great 
 financial house, and that, in our day, is as good as anything else. 
 For an American, at any rate, that will do very well. But I 
 persist in thinking your cousin is very lucky to have a chronic 
 , malady ; so long as he doesn't die of it. It's much better than 
 the snuff-boxes. If he were not ill, you say, he would do some- 
 thing 1 he would take his father's place in the house. My poor 
 child, I doubt it ; I don't think he is at all fond of the house. 
 However, you know him better than I, though I used to know 
 him rather well, and he may have the benefit of the doubt. 
 The worst case, I think, is a friend of mine, a countryman of 
 ours, who lives in Italy (where he also was brought before he 
 knew better), and who is one of the most delightful men I know. 
 Some day you must know him. I will bring you together, and 
 then you will see what I mean. He is Gilbert Osmond he 
 lives in Italy ; that is all one can say about him. He is exceed- 
 ingly clever, a man made to be distinguished ; but, as I say, you 
 exhaust the description when you say that he is Mr. Osmond, 
 who lives in Italy* No career, no name, no position, no fortune, 
 no past, no future, no anything. Oh yes, he paints, if you please 
 paints in water-colours, like me, only better than I. His 
 painting is pretty bad ; on the whole I am rather glad of that. 
 Fortunately he is very indolent, so indolent that it amounts to a 
 sort of position. He can say, ' Oh, I do nothing ; I am too 
 deadly lazy. You can do nothing to-day unless you get up at 
 five o'clock in the morning.' In that way he becomes a sort of 
 exception; you feel that he might do something if he would 
 only rise early. He never speaks of his painting to people at 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 255 
 
 large ; lie is too clever for that. But he has a little girl a dear 
 little girl ; he does speak of her. He is devoted to her, and if 
 it were a career to be an excellent father he would be very dis- 
 tinguished. But I am afraid that is no better than the snuff- 
 boxes; perhaps not even so good. Tell me what they do in 
 America," pursued Madame Merle, who, it must be observed, 
 parenthetically, did not deliver herself all at once of these reflec- 
 tions, which are presented in a cluster for the convenience of the 
 reader. She talked of Florence, where Mr. Osmond lived, and 
 where Mrs. Touchett occupied a mediaeval palace ; she talked of 
 Eome, where she herself had a little pied-d-terre, with some 
 rather good old damask. She talked of places, of people, and 
 even, as the phrase is, of " subjects " ; and from time to time 
 she talked of their kind old host and of the prospect of his 
 recovery. From the first she had thought this prospect small, 
 and Isabel had been struck with the positive, discriminating, 
 competent way which she took of the measure of his remainder 
 of life. One evening she announced definitely that he would 
 not live. 
 
 " Sir Matthew Hope told me so, as plainly as was proper," 
 she said; "standing there, near the fire, before dinner. He 
 makes himself very agreeable, the great doctor. I don't mean 
 that his saying that has anything to do with it. But he says 
 such things with great tact. I had said to him that I felt ill 
 at my ease, staying here at such a time ; it seemed to me so 
 indiscreet it was not as if I could nurse. ' You must remain, 
 you must remain,' he answered; 'your office will come later.' 
 Was not that a very delicate way both of saying that poor Mr. 
 Touchett would go, and that I might be of some use as a 
 consoler I In fact, however, I shall not be of the slightest use. 
 Your aunt will console herself ; she, and she alone, knows just 
 
256 THE POETRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 how much consolation she will require. It would be a very 
 delicate matter for another person to undertake to administer 
 the dose. With your cousin it will be different ; he will miss 
 his father sadly. But I should never presume to condole with 
 Mr. Ralph ; we are not on those terms." 
 
 Madame Merle had alluded more than once to some undefined 
 incongruity in her relations with Ralph Touchett; so Isabel 
 took this occasion of asking her if they were not good friends, 
 
 " Perfectly ; but he doesn't like me." 
 
 " What have you done to him ? " 
 
 " Nothing whatever. But one has no need of a reason for 
 that." 
 
 " For not liking you ? I think one has need of a very good 
 reason." 
 
 " You are very kind. Be sure you have one ready for the 
 day when you begin." 
 
 " Begin to dislike you 1 I shall never begin." 
 
 " I hope not ; because if you do, you will never end. That 
 is the way with your cousin ; he doesn't get over it. It's an 
 antipathy of nature if I can call it that when it is all on his 
 side. I have nothing whatever against him, and don't bear him 
 the least little grudge for not doing me justice. Justice is all I 
 ask. However, one feels that he is a gentleman, and would 
 never say anything underhand about one. Cartes sur table" 
 Madame Merle subjoined in a moment, " I am not afraid of 
 him." 
 
 " I hope not, indeed," said Isabel, who added something 
 about his being the kindest fellow living. She remembered, 
 however, that on her first asking him about Madame Merle he 
 had answered her in a manner which this lady might have 
 thought injurious without being explicit. There was something 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 257 
 
 between them, Isabel said to herself, but she said nothing more 
 than this. If it were something of importance, it should inspire 
 respect ; if it were not, it was not worth her curiosity. With 
 all her love of knowledge, Isabel had a natural shrinking from 
 raising curtains and looking into unlighted corners. The love 
 of knowledge co-existed in her mind with a still tenderer love of 
 ignorance. 
 
 But Madame Merle sometimes said things that startled her, 
 made her raise her clear eyebrows at the time, and think of the 
 words afterwards. 
 
 " I would give a great deal to be your age again," she broke 
 out once, with a bitterness which, though diluted in her cus- 
 
 \ ^fdt 
 
 ternary smile, was by no means disguised by it. " If I could 
 only begin again if I could have my life before me ! " 
 
 " Your life is before you yet," Isabel answered gently, for she 
 was vaguely awe-struck. 
 
 " No ; the best part is gone, and gone for nothing." 
 
 " Surely, not for nothing," said Isabel. 
 
 " Why not what have I got 1 Neither husband, nor child, 
 nor fortune, nor position, nor the traces of a beauty which I 
 never had." 
 
 " You have friends, dear lady." 
 
 " I am not so sure ! " cried Madame Merle. 
 
 " Ah, you are wrong. You have memories, talents " 
 
 Madame Merle interrupted her. 
 
 " What have my talents brought me T Nothing but the need 
 of using them still, to get through the hours, the years, to cheat 
 myself with some pretence of action. As for my memories, the 
 less said about them the better. You will be my friend till you 
 find a better use for your friendship." 
 
 " It will be for you to see that I don't then," said Isabel. 
 VOL. i. s 
 
258 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 " Yes ; I would make an effort to keep you," Madame Merle 
 rejoined, looking at her gravely. " When I say I should like 
 to be your age," she went on, "I mean with your qualities 
 frank, generous, sincere, like you. In that case I should have 
 made something better of my life." 
 
 u What should you have liked to do that you have not done?" 
 
 Madame Merle took a sheet of music she was seated at the 
 piano, and had abruptly wheeled about on the stool when she 
 first spoke and mechanically turned the leaves. At last she 
 said 
 
 " I am very ambitious ! " 
 
 " And your ambitions have not been satisfied 1 They must 
 have been great." 
 
 "They were great. I should make myself ridiculous by 
 talking of them." 
 
 Isabel wondered what they could have been whether 
 Madame Merle had aspired to wear a crown. " I don't know 
 what your idea of success may be, but you seem to me to 
 have been successful. To me, indeed, you are an image of 
 success." 
 
 Madame Merle tossed away the music with a smile. 
 
 " What is your idea of success 1 " 
 
 "You evidently think it must be very tame," said Isabel. 
 " It is to see some dream of one's youth come true." 
 
 "Ah," Madame Merle exclaimed, "that I have never seen! 
 But my dreams were so great so preposterous. Heaven forgive 
 me, I am dreaming now." And she turned back to the piano 
 and began to play with energy. 
 
 On the morrow she said to Isabel that her definition of 
 success had been very pretty, but frightfully sad. Measured in 
 that way, who had succeeded ? The dreams of one's youth, why 
 
'& 
 
 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 259 
 
 they were enchanting, they were divine ! Who had ever seen 
 such things come to pass ? 
 
 " I myself a few of them," Isabel ventured to answer. 
 
 "Already? They must have been dreams of yesterday." 
 
 "I began to dream very young," said Isabel, smiling. 
 
 " Ah, if you mean the aspirations of your childhood that of 
 having a pink sash and a doll that could close her eyes." 
 
 " Xo, I don't mean that." 
 
 " Or a young man with a moustache going down on his 
 knees to you." 
 
 " No, nor that either," Isabel declared, blushing. 
 
 Madame Merle gave a glance at her blush which caused it to 
 
 " I suspect that is what you do mean. We have all had the 
 young man with the moustache. He is the inevitable young 
 man ; he doesn't count." 
 
 Isabel was silent for a moment, and then, with extreme and 
 characteristic inconsequence 
 
 " Why shouldn't he count 1 There are young men and young 
 men." 
 
 " And yours was a paragon is that what you mean ? " cried 
 her friend with a laugh. " If you have had the identical young 
 man you dreamed of, then that was success, and I congratulate 
 you. Only, in that case, why didn't you fly with him to his 
 castle in the Apennines ? " 
 
 " He has no castle in the Apennines." 
 
 " What has he 1 An ugly brick house in Fortieth Street 1 
 Don't tell me that ; I refuse to recognise that as an ideal." 
 
 " I don't care anything about his house," said Isabel. 
 
 " That is very crude of you. When you have lived as long 
 as I, you will see that every human being has his shell, and 
 
 S 2 
 
260 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 that you must take the shell into account. By the shell I mean 
 the whole envelope of circumstances. There is no such thing 
 as an isolated man or woman ; we are each of us made up of a 
 cluster of appurtenances. What do you call one's self ? Where 
 does it begin 1 where does it end *? It overflows into everything 
 that belongs to us and then it flows back again. I know that 
 a large part of myself is in the dresses I choose to wear. I have 
 a great respect for things ! One's self for other people is 
 one's expression of one's self; and one's house, one's clothes, 
 the books one reads, the company one keeps these things are 
 all expressive." 
 
 This was very metaphysical ; not more so, however, than 
 several observations Madame Merle had already made. Isabel 
 was fond of metaphysics, but she was unable to accompany her 
 friend into this bold analysis of the human personality. 
 
 " I don't agree with you," she said. " I think just the other 
 way. I don't know whether I succeed in expressing myself, 
 but I know that nothing else expresses me. Nothing that 
 belongs to me is any measure of me ; on the contrary, it's a 
 limit, a barrier, and a perfectly arbitrary one. Certainly, the 
 clothes which, as you say, I choose to wear, don't express me ; 
 and heaven forbid they should ! " 
 
 " You dress very well," interposed Madame Merle, skilfully. 
 
 " Possibly ; but I don't care to be judged by that. My 
 clothes may express the dressmaker, but they don't express me. 
 To begin with, it's not my own choice that I wear them ; they 
 are imposed upon me by society." 
 
 "Should you prefer to go without them?" Madame Merle 
 inquired, in a tone which virtually terminated the discussion. 
 
 I am bound to confess, though it may cast some discredit 
 upon the sketch I have given of the youthful loyalty which our 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 261 
 
 heroine practised towards this accomplished woman, that Isabel 
 had said nothing whatever to her about Lord Warburton, and 
 had been equally reticent on the subject of Caspar Goodwood. 
 Isabel had not concealed from her, however, that she had had 
 opportunities of marrying, and had even let her know that they 
 were of a highly advantageous kind. Lord Warburton had left 
 Lockleigh, and was gone to Scotland, taking his sisters with 
 him ; and though he had written to Ralph more than once, to 
 ask about Mr. Touchett's health, the girl was not liable to the 
 embarrassment of such inquiries as, had he still been in the 
 neighbourhood, he would probably have felt bound to make in 
 person. He had admirable self-control, but she felt sure that 
 if he had come to Gardencourt he would have seen Madame 
 Merle, and that if he had seen her he would have liked her, 
 and betrayed to her that he was in love with her young friend. 
 
 It so happened that during Madame Merle's previous visits 
 to Gardencourt each of them much shorter than the present 
 one he had either not been at Lockleigh or had not called at 
 Mr. Touchett's. Therefore, though she knew him by name as 
 the great man of that county, she had no cause to suspect him 
 of being a suitor of Mrs. Touchett's freshly-imported niece. 
 
 " You have plenty of time," she had said to Isabel, in return 
 for the mutilated confidences which Isabel made her, and which 
 did not pretend to be perfect, though we have seen that at 
 moments the girl had compunctions at having said so much. 
 " I am glad you have done nothing yet that you have it still 
 to do. It is a very good thing for a girl to have refused a few 
 good offers so long, of course, as they are not the best she is 
 likely to have. Excuse me if my tone seems horribly worldly; 
 one must take that view sometimes. Only don't keep on refus- 
 ing for the sake of refusing. It's a pleasant exercise of power ; 
 
262 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 but accepting is after all an exercise of power as well. There is 
 always the danger of refusing once too often. It was not the 
 one I fell into I didn't refuse often enough. You are an 
 exquisite creature, and I should like to see you married to a 
 prime minister. But speaking strictly, you know you are not 
 what is technically called a parti. You are extremely good- 
 looking, and extremely clever ; in yourself you are quite excep- 
 tional. You appear to have the vaguest ideas about your 
 earthly possessions ; but from what I can make out, you are not 
 embarrassed with an income. I wish you had a little money." 
 
 " I wish I had ! " said Isabel, simply, apparently forgetting 
 for the moment that her poverty had been a venial fault for two 
 gallant gentlemen. 
 
 In spite of Sir Matthew Hope's benevolent recommendation, 
 Madame Merle did not remain to the end, as the issue of poor 
 Mr. Touchett's malady had now come frankly to be designated. 
 She was under pledges to other people which had at last to be 
 redeemed, and she left Gardencourt with the understanding that 
 she should in any event see Mrs. Touchett there again, or in 
 town, before quitting England. Her parting with Isabel was 
 even more like the beginning of a friendship than their meeting 
 had been. 
 
 "I am going to six places in succession," she said, " but I 
 shall see no one I like so well as you. They will all be old 
 friends, however ; one doesn't make new friends at my age. I 
 have made a great exception for you. You must remember 
 that, and you must think well of me. You must reward me by 
 believing in me." 
 
 By way of answer, Isabel kissed her, and though some women 
 kiss with facility, there are kisses and kisses, and this embrace 
 was satisfactory to Madame Merle. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 263 
 
 Isabel, after this, was much alone ; she saw her aunt and 
 cousin only at meals, and discovered that of the hours that Mrs. 
 Touchett was invisible, only a minor portion was now devoted 
 to nursing her husband. She spent the rest in her own apart- 
 ments, to which access was not allowed even to her niece, in 
 mysterious and inscrutable exercises. At table she was grave 
 and silent ; but her solemnity was not an attitude Isabel could 
 see that it was a conviction. She wondered whether her aunt 
 repented of having taken her own way so much ; but there was 
 no visible evidence of this no tears, no sighs, no exaggeration 
 of a zeal which had always deemed itself sufficient. Mrs. 
 Touchett seemed simply to feel the need of thinking things over 
 and summing them up ; she had a little moral account-book 
 with columns unerringly ruled, and a sharp steel clasp which 
 she kept with exemplary neatness. 
 
 " If I had foreseen this I would not have proposed your 
 coming abroad now," she said to Isabel after Madame Merle had 
 left the house. " I would have waited and sent for you next 
 year." 
 
 Her remarks had usually a practical ring. 
 
 " So that perhaps I should never have known my uncle 1 
 It's a great happiness to me to have come now." 
 
 " That's very well. But it was not that you might know 
 your uncle that I brought you to Europe." A perfectly veracious 
 speech ; but, as Isabel thought, not as perfectly timed. 
 
 She had leisure to think of this and other matters. She took 
 a solitary walk every day, and spent much time in turning over 
 the books in the library. Among the subjects that engaged her 
 attention were the adventures of her friend Miss Stackpole, 
 with whom she was in regular correspondence. Isabel liked 
 her friend's private epistolary style better than her public ; that 
 
264 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 is, she thought her public letters would have been excellent if 
 they had not been printed. Henrietta's career, however, was 
 not so successful as might have been wished even in the interest 
 of her private felicity ; that view of the inner life of Great 
 Britain which she was so eager to take appeared to dance before 
 her like an ignis fatuus. The invitation from Lady Pensil, for 
 mysterious reasons, had never arrived ; and poor Mr. Bantling 
 himself, with all his friendly ingenuity, had been unable to 
 explain so grave a dereliction on the part of a missive that had 
 obviously been sent. Mr. Bantling, however, had evidently 
 taken Henrietta's affairs much to heart, and believed that he 
 owed her a set-off to this illusory visit to Bedfordshire. " He 
 says he should think I would go to the Continent," Henrietta 
 wrote ; " and as he thinks of going there himself, I suppose his 
 advice is sincere. He wants to know why I don't take a view 
 of French life ; and it is a fact that I want very much to see 
 the new Eepublic. Mr. Bantling doesn't care much about the 
 Eepublic, but he thinks of going over to Paris any way. I must 
 say he is quite as attentive as I could wish, and at any rate I 
 shall have seen one polite Englishman. I keep telling Mr. 
 Bantling that he ought to have been an American ; and you 
 ought to see how it pleases him. Whenever I say so, he always 
 breaks out with the same exclamation ' Ah, but really, come 
 now ! ' " A few days later she wrote that she had decided to 
 go to Paris at the end of the week, and that Mr. Bantling had 
 promised to see her off perhaps even he would go as far as 
 Dover with her. She would wait in Paris till Isabel should 
 arrive, Henrietta added ; speaking quite as if Isabel were to 
 start on her Continental journey alone, and making no allusion 
 to Mrs. Touchett. Bearing in min4 his interest in their late 
 companion, our heroine communicated several passages from 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 265 
 
 Miss Stackpole's letters to Ralph, who followed with an emo- 
 tion akin to suspense the career of the correspondent of the 
 Interviewer. 
 
 " It seems to me that she is doing very well," he said, " going 
 over to Paris with an ex-guardsman ! If she wants something 
 to write about, she has only to describe that episode." 
 
 " It is not conventional, certainly," Isabel answered ; " but if 
 you mean that as far as Henrietta is concerned it is not 
 perfectly innocent, you are very much mistaken. You will 
 never understand Henrietta." 
 
 " Excuse me ; I understand her perfectly. I didn't at all at 
 first ; but now I have got the point of view. I am afraid, 
 however, that Bantling has not; he may have some surprises. 
 Oh, I understand Henrietta as well as if I had made her ! " 
 
 Isabel was by no means sure of this ; but she abstained from 
 expressing further doubt, for she was disposed in these days to 
 extend a great charity to her cousin. One afternoon, less than 
 a week after Madame Merle's departure, she was seated in 
 the library with a volume to which her attention was not 
 fastened. She had placed herself in a deep window-bench, 
 from which she looked out into the dull, damp park ; and as the 
 library stood at right angles to the entrance-front of the house, 
 she could see the doctor's dog-cart, which had been waiting for 
 the last two hours before the door. She was struck with the 
 doctor's remaining so long ; but at last she saw him appear in 
 the portico, stand a moment, slowly drawing on his gloves and 
 looking at the knees of his horse, and then get into the vehicle 
 and drive away. Isabel kept her place for half-an-hour ; there 
 was a great stillness in the house. It was st> great that when 
 she at last heard a soft, slow step on the deep carpet of the 
 room, she was almost startled by the sound. She turned 
 
266 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 
 
 quickly away from the window, and saw Ralph Touchett 
 standing there, with his hands still in his pockets, but with a 
 face absolutely void of its usual latent smile. She got up, and 
 her movement and glance were a question. 
 
 " It's all over," said Ralph. 
 
 "Do you mean that my uncle ?" And Isabel stopped. 
 
 " My father died an hour ago." 
 
 " Ah, my poor Ralph ! " the girl murmured, putting out her 
 hand to him. 
 
 END OF VOL. 
 
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