Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/25

 vague. But when you come to the point, you see you have to stop. I can't go home and be a shopkeeper. You think I am very well fitted? Ah, Miss Archer, you overrate me. I can buy very well, but I can't sell; you should see when I sometimes try to get rid of my things. It takes much more ability to make other people buy than to buy yourself. When I think how clever they must be, the people who make me buy! Ah, no; I couldn't be a shopkeeper. I can't be a doctor, it's a repulsive business. I can't be a clergyman, I haven't got convictions. And then I can't pronounce the names right in the Bible. They are very difficult, in the Old Testament particularly. I can't be a lawyer; I don't understand—how do you call it?—the American procédure. Is there anything else? There is nothing for a gentleman to do in America. I should like to be a diplomatist; but American diplomacy that is not for gentlemen either. I am sure if you had seen the last min"

Henrietta Stackpole, who was often with her friend when Mr. Rosier, coming to pay his compliments, late in the afternoon, expressed himself after the fashion I have sketched, usually interrupted the young man at this point and read him a lecture on the duties of the American citizen. She thought him most unnatural; he was worse than Mr. Ralph Touchett. Henrietta, however, was at this time more than ever addicted to fine criticism, for her conscience had been freshly alarmed as regards Isabel. She had not congratulated this young lady on her accession of fortune, and begged to be excused from doing so.

"If Mr. Touchett had consulted me about leaving you the money," she frankly said, "I would have said to him, 'Never!'"

"I see," Isabel had answered. "You think it will prove a curse in disguise. Perhaps it will."