Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/87

79 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 79 Ralph said, humbly. "But it's a very strange type. She is too personal considering that she expects other people not to be. She walks in without knocking at the door." " Yes," Isabel admitted, " she doesn't sufficiently recognise the existence of knockers ; and indeed I am not sure that she doesn't think them a rather pretentious ornament. She thinks one's door should stand ajar. But I persist in liking her." "I persist in thinking her too familiar," Ralph rejoined, naturally somewhat uncomfortable under the sense of having been doubly deceived in Miss Stackpole. " Well," said Isabel, smiling, " I am afraid it is because she is rather vulgar that I like her." " She would be flattered by your reason ! " " If I should tell her, I would not express it in that way. I should say it is because there is something of the ' people ' in her." "What do you know about the people? and what does she, for that matter V' " She knows a great deal, and I know enough to feel that she is a kind of emanation of the great democracy of the continent, the country, the nation. I don't say that she sums it all up, that would be too much to ask of her. But she suggests it ; she reminds me of it." " You like her then for patriotic reasons. I am afraid it is on those very grounds that I object to her." " Ah," said Isabel, with a kind of joyous sigh, " I like so many tilings ! If a thing strikes me in a certain way, I like it. I don't want to boast, but I suppose I am rather versatile. I like people to be totally different from Henrietta in the style of Lord Warburton's sisters, for instance. So long as I look at the Misses Molyneux, they seem to me to answer a kind of ideal. Then Henrietta presents herself, and I am immensely struck with her ; not so much for herself as what stands behind her." " Ah, you mean the back view of her," Ralph suggested. "What she says is true,"his cousin answered ; "you will never be serious. I like the great country stretching away beyond the rivers and across the prairies, blooming and smiling and spreading, till it stops at the blue Pacific ! A strong, sweet, fresh odour seems to rise from it, and Henrietta excuse my simile has something of that odour in her garments." Isabel blushed a little as she concluded this speech, and the blush, toge'her with the momentary ardour she had thrown into it, was so becoming to her that Ralph stood smiling at her for a moment after she had ceased speaking.