Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/263

 "There's complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would make the explosion. Osmond isn't fond of his wife's cousin."

"Then of course he would make a row. But won't he make a row if you stop here?"

"That's what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in Rome, and then I thought it my duty to go away. Now I think it's my duty to stop and defend her."

"My dear Touchett, your defensive powers—" Lord Warburton began, with a smile. But he saw something in his companion's face that checked him. "Your duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a nice question," he said.

Ralph for a short time answered nothing.

"It is true that my defensive powers are small," he remarked at last; "but as my aggressive ones are still smaller, Osmond may, after all, not think me worth his gunpowder. At any rate," he added, "there are things I am curious to see."

"You are sacrificing your health to your curiosity then?"

"I am not much interested in my health, and I am deeply interested in Mrs. Osmond."

"So am I. But not as I once was," Lord Warburton added quickly. This was one of the allusions he had not hitherto found occasion to make.

"Does she strike you as very happy?" Ralph inquired, emboldened by this confidence.

"Well, I don't know; I have hardly thought. She told me the other night that she was happy."

"Ah, she told you, of course," Ralph exclaimed, smiling.

"I don't know that. It seems to me I was rather the sort of person she might have complained to."

"Complain? She will never complain. She has done it,