Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/131

 with his hat in the attitude of ennui and his hands where they usually were.

"I saw you below a moment since, and was going down to you. I feel lonely and want company," Ralph remarked.

"You have some that is very good that you have deserted."

"Do you mean my cousin] Oh, she has got a visitor and doesn't want me. Then Miss Stackpole and Bantling have gone out to a café to eat an ice—Miss Stackpole delights in an ice. I didn't think they wanted me either. The opera is very bad; the women look like laundresses and sing like peacocks. I feel very low."

"You had better go home," Lord Warburton said, without affectation.

"And leave my young lady in this sad place? Ah no, I must watch over her."

"She seems to have plenty of friends."

"Yes, that's why I must watch," said Ralph, with the same low-voiced mock-melancholy.

"If she doesn't want you, it's probable she doesn't want me."

"No, you are different. Go to the box and stay there while I walk about."

Lord Warburton went to the box, where he received a very gracious welcome from the more attractive of its occupants. He exchanged greetings with Mr. Osmond, to whom he had been introduced the day before, and who, after he came in, sat very quietly, scarcely mingling in the somewhat disjointed talk in which Lord Warburton engaged with Isabel. It seemed to the latter gentleman that Miss Archer looked very pretty; he even thought she looked excited; as she was, however, at all times a keenly-glancing, quickly-moving, completely animated young woman, he may have been mistaken on this point. Her talk