Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/354

346 346 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. For Mr. Osmond Ralph had not now that importance. It was not that he had the importance of a friend ; it was rather that he had none at all. He was Isabel's cousin, and he was rather unpleasantly ill it was on this basis that 'Osmond treated with him. He made the proper inquiries, asked about his health, about Mrs. Touchett, about his opinion of winter climates, whether he was comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, on the few occasions of their meeting, not a word that was not necessary ; but his manner had always the urbanity proper to conscious success in the presence of conscious failure. For all this, Ralph had, towards the end, an inward conviction that Osmond had made it uncomfortable for his wife that she should continue to receive her cousin. He was not jealous he had not that excuse ; no one could be jealous of Ralph. But he made Isabel pay for her old-time kindness, of which so much was still left ; and as Ralph had no idea of her paying too much, when, his suspicion had become sharp, he took himself off. In doing so he deprived Isabel of a very interesting occupation : she had been constantly wondering what fine principle kept him alive. She decided that it was his love of conversation ; his convers- ation was better than ever. He had given up walking ; he was no longer a humorous stroller. He sat all day in a chair almost any chair would do, and was so dependent on what you would do for him that, had not his talk been highly contempla- tive, you might have thought he was blind. The reader already knows more about him than Isabel was ever to know, and the reader may therefore be given the key to the mystery. What kept Ralph alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen enough of his cousin ; he was not yet satisfied. There was more to come; he couldn't make up his mind to lose that. He wished to see what she would make of her husband or what he would make of her. This was only the first act of the drama, and he was determined to sit out the performance. His determination held good it kept him going some eighteen months more, till the time of his return to Rome with Lord Warburton. It gave him indeed such an air of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs. Touchett, though more accessible to confusions of thought in the matter of this strange, unremunerative and unremunerated son of hers than she had ever been before, had, as we have learned, not scrupled to embark for a distant land. If Ralph had been kept alive by suspense, it was with a good deal of the same emotion the excitement of wondering in what state she should find him that Isabel ascended to hi* apartment the day after Lord Warburton had notified her of his arrival in Rome.