Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/435

427 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 427 t- do with her present enterprise; her journey was rather an expression of her independence of the old world than of a sense of further obligations to it. " It's nothing to come to Europe," she said to Isabel ; " it doesn't seem to me one needs so many reasons for that. It is something to stay at home ; this is much more important." It was not therefore with a sense of doing anything very important that she treated herself to another pilgrimage to Rome ; she had seen the place before and carefully inspected it ; the actual episode was simply a sign of familiarity, of one's knowing all about it, of one's having as good a right as any one else to be there. This was all very well, and Henrietta was restless ; she had a perfect right to be restless, too, if one came to that. But she had after all a better reason for coming to Rome than that she cared for it so little. Isabel easily recognised it, and with it the worth of her friend's fidelity. She had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because she guessed that Isabel was sad. Henrietta guessed a great deal, but she had never guessed so happily as that. Isabel's satis- factions just now were few, but even if they had been more numerous, there would still have been something of individual joy in her sense of being justified in having always thought highly of Henrietta. She had made large concessions with regard to her, but she had insisted that, with all abatements, she was very valuable. It was not her own triumph, however, that Isabel found good ; it was simply the relief of confessing to Henrietta, the first person to whom she had owned it, that she was not contented. Henrietta had herself approached this point with the smallest possible delay, and had accused her to her face of being miserable. She was a woman, she was a sister; she was not Ralph, nor Lord Warburton, nor Caspar Goodwood, and Isabel could speak. " Yes, I am miserable," she said, very gently. She hated to hear herself say it ; she tried to say it as judicially as possible. " What does he do to you 1 " Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were inquiring into the operations of a quack doctor. " He does nothing. But he doesn't like me." " He's very difficult ! " cried Miss Stackpole. " Why don't you leave him 1 " " I can't change, that way," Isabel said. " Why not, I should like to know 1 You won't confess that you have made a mistake. You are too proud." " I don't know whether I am too proud. But I can't publish my mistake. I don't think that's decent. I would much rather die."