Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/517

509 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 609 " Go and thank God you have no child," said Mrs. Touchett, disengaging herself. Three days after this a considerable number of people found time, in the height of the London " season," to take a morning train down to a quiet station in Berkshire and spend half-an- hour in a small grey church, which stood within an easy walk. It was in the green burial-place of this edifice that Mrs. Touchett consigned her son to earth. She stood herself at the edge of the grave, and Isabel stood beside her ; the sexton himself had not a more practical interest in the scene than Mrs. Touchett. It was a solemn occasion, but it was not a disagreeable one ; there was a certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather had changed to fair ; the day, one of the last of the treacherous May- time, was warm and windless, and the air had the bright- ness of the hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad to think of poor Touchett, it was not too sad, since death, for him, had had no violence. He had been dying so long ; he was so ready ; everything had been so expected and prepared. There were tears in Isabel's eyes, but they were not tears that blinded. She looked through them at the beauty of the day, the splendour of nature, the sweetness of the old English churchyard, the bowed heads of good friends. Lord Warburton was there, and a group of gentlemen unknown to Isabel, several of whom, as she after- wards learned, were connected with the bank; and there were others whom she knew. Miss Stackpole was among the first, with honest Mr. Bantling beside her; and Caspar Goodwood, lifting his head higher than the rest bowing it rather less. During much of the time Isabel was conscious of Mr. Goodwood's gaze ; he looked at her somewhat harder than he usually looked in public, while the others had fixed their eyes upon the church- yard turf. But she never let him see that she saw him ; she thought of him only to wonder that he was still in England. She found that she had taken for granted that after accompanying Ealph to Gardencourt he had gone away ; she remembered that it was not a country that pleased him. He was there, however, very distinctly there ; and something in his attitude seemed to say that he was there with a complex intention. She would not meet his eyes, though there was doubtless sympathy in them ; he made her rather uneasy. With the dispersal of the little group he disappeared, and the only person who came to speak to her though several spoke to Mrs. Touchett was Henrietta Stackpole. Henrietta had been crying. Ralph had said to Isabel that he hoped she would remain %t Gardencourt, and she made no immediate motion to leave the