Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/295

287 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 287 " That is very selfish of you ! " Isabel cried, with the ardour of a real conviction. " If you are not happy yourself, others have a right to be." " Very likely it is selfish ; but I don't in the least mind your saying so. I don't mind anything you can say now I don't feel it. The cruellest things you could think of would be mere pin- pricks. After what you have done I shall never feel anything. I mean anything but that. That I shall feel all my life." Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with a sort of dry deliberateness, in his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour over propositions intrinsically crude. The tone made Isabel angry rather than touched her ; but her anger perhaps was fortunate, inasmuch as it gave her a further reason for controlling herself. It was under the pressure of this control that she said, after a little, irrelevantly, by way of answer to Mr. Goodwood's speech " When did you leave New York?" He threw up his head a moment, as if he were calculating. " Seventeen days ago." " You must have travelled-fast in spite of your slow trains." " I came as fast as I could. I would have come five days ago if I had been able." "It wouldn't have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood," said Isabel, smiling. "Not to you no. But to me." " You gain nothing that I see." " That is for me to judge ! " " Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself." And then, to change the subject, Isabel asked him if he had seen Henrietta Stackpole. He looked as if he had not come from Boston to Florence to talk about Henrietta Stackpole ; but he answered distinctly enough, that this young lady had come to see him just before he left America. " She came to see you ? " " Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the day I had got your letter." " Did you tell her 1 " Isabel asked, with a certain anxiety. " Oh no," said Caspar Goodwood, simply ; " I didn't want to. She will hear it soon enough ; she hears everything." " I shall write to her ; and then she will write to me and scold me," Isabel declared, trying to smile again. Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. " I guess she'll come out," he said.