Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/166

158 158 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. " You are in love with her, then < 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 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 1 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 Ealph. " 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 Ealph, who mar- velled, at his father's tenacity and at his finding strength to insist. " Then where shall we all be 1 " " Where shall you be if I don't provide for you ? You won't have anything to do with the bank, and you won't have me to