Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/108

100 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 his 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 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