Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/62

54 54 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. hedgerows made thick by midsummer. When they reached home, they usually found that tea had been served upon the Jawn, and that Mrs. Touchett had not absolved herself from the obligation of handing her husband his cup. But the two for the most part sat silent; the old man with his head back and his eyes closed, his wife occupied with her knitting, and wearing that appearance of extraordinary meditation with which some ladies contemplate the movement of their needles. One day, however, a visitor had arrived. The two young people, after spending an hour upon the river, strolled back to the house and perceived Lord Warburton sitting under the trees and engaged in conversation of which even at a distance the desultory character was appreciable, with Mrs. Touchett. He had driven over from his own place with a portmanteau, and had asked, as the father and son often invited him to do, for a dinner and a lodging. Isabel, seeing him for half-an-hour 011 the day of her arrival, had discovered in this brief space that she liked him ; he had made indeed a tolerably vivid impression on her mind, and she had thought of him several times. She had hoped that she should see him again hoped too that she should see a few others. Gardencourt was not dull ; the place itself was so delightful, her uncle was such a perfection of an uncle, and Ralph was so unlike any cousin she had ever encountered her view of cousins being rather monotonous Then her impres- sions were still so fresh and so quickly renewed that there was as yet hardly a sense of vacancy in the prospect. But Isabel had need to remind herself that she was interested in human nature, and that her foremost hope in coming abroad had been that she should see a great many people. When Ralph said to her, as he had done several times " I wonder you find this endurable; you ought to see some of the neighbours and some of our friends because we have really got a few, though you would never suppose it " when he offered to invite what he called a "lot of people," and make the young girl acquainted with English society, she encouraged the hospitable impulse and promised, in advance, to be delighted. Little, however, for the present, had come of Ralph's offers, and it may be confided to the reader that, if the young man delayed to carry them out, it was because he found the labour of entertaining his cousin by no means so severe as to require extraneous help. Isabel had spoken to him very often about " specimens"; it was a word that played a considerable part in her vocabulary ; she had given him to understand that she wished to see English society illustrated by iigures.