Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/147

139 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 139 " 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 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 j 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 a long time ; I am very happy here." " Do you mean to give up your country ? " " 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." 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 nutter of those stainless pinions. He was not afraid of having a wife with a certain largeness of movement ; he was a man of long