Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/199

191 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 191 indefensible, was a decided advantage to Miss Stackpole, and who was furnished with an easy, traditional, though by no means exhaustive, answer to almost any social or practical question that could come up. She often found Mr. Bantling's answers very convenient, and in the press of catching the American post would make use of them in her correspondence. It was to be feared that she was indeed drifting toward those mysterious shallows as to which Isabel, wishing for a good- humoured retort, had warned her. There might be danger in store for Isabel ; but it was scarcely to be hoped that Miss Stackpole, on her side, would find permanent safety in the adoption of second-hand views. Isabel continued to warn her, good-humouredly ; Lady Pensil's obliging brother was some- times, on our heroine's lips, an object of irreverent and facetious allusion. Nothing, however, could exceed Henrietta's amiability on this point ; she used to abound in the sense of Isabel's irony, and to enumerate with elation the hours she had spent with the good Mr. Bantling. Then, a few moments later, she would forget that they had been talking jocosely, and would mention with impulsive earnestness some expedition she had made in the company of the gallant ex-guardsman. She would say u Oh, I know all about Versailles ; I went there with Mr. Bantling. I was bound to see it thoroughly I warned him when we went out there that I was thorough ; so we spent three days at the hotel and wandered all over the place. It was lovely weather a kind of Indian summer, only not so good. We just lived in that park. Oh yes ; you can't tell me anything about Versailles." Henrietta appeared to have made arrangements to meet Mr. Bantling in the spring, in Italy. XXI. MRS. TOUCHETT, before arriving in Paris, had fixed the day for her departure; and by the middle of February she had begun to travel southward. She did not go directly to Florence, but interrupted her journey to pay a visit to her son, who at San Kemo, on the Italian shore of the Mediterranean, had been spending a dull, bright winter, under a white umbrella. Isabel went with her aunt, as a matter of course, though Mrs. Touchett, with her usual homely logic, had laid before her a pair of alter- natives. " Now, of course, you are completely your own mistress," she