Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/201

193 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 193 had a chance to fasten upon it no wind-sown blossom, no familiar moss. Her passive extent, in other words, was about that of a knife-edge. Isabel had reason to believe, however, that as she advanced in life she grew more disposed to confer those sentimental favours which she was still unable to accept to sacrifice consistency to considerations of that inferior order for which the excuse must be found in the particular case. It was not to the credit of her absolute rectitude that she should have gone the longest way round to Florence, in order to spend a few weeks with her invalid son ; for in former years it had been one of her most definite convictions that when Ralph wished to see her he was at liberty to remember that the Palazzo Crescentini contained a spacious apartment which was known as the room of the signorino. " I want to ask you something," Isabel said to this young man, the day after her arrival at San Remo " something that I have thought more than once of asking you by letter, but that I have hesitated on the whole to write about. Face to face, never- theless, my question seems easy enough. Did you know that your father intended to leave me so much money ? " Ralph stretched his legs a little further than usual, and gazed a little more fixedly at the Mediterranean. " What does it matter, my dear Isabel, whether I knew 1 My father was very obstinate." " So," said the girl, "you did know." " Yes ; he told me. We even talked it over a little." " What did he do it for ?" asked Isabel, abruptly. " Why, as a kind of souvenir." " He liked me too much," said Isabel. te That's a way we all have." " If I believed that, I should be very unhappy. Fortunately I don't believe it. I want to be treated with justice ; I want nothing but that." " Very good. But you must remember that justice to a lovely being is after all a florid sort of sentiment." " I am not a lovely being. How can you say that, at the very moment when I am asking such odious questions ? I must seem to you delicate." " You seem to me troubled," said Ralph. " I am troubled." " About what 1 " For a moment she answered nothing ; then she broke out " Do you think it good for me suddenly to be made so rich 1 Henrietta doesn't."