Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/28

 suspicion that they were playing, somehow, at cross-purposes—that the simplicity of each of them had been entrapped. But this simplicity was none the less honourable on either side; it was as graceful on Henrietta's part to believe that Mr. Bantling took an interest in the diffusion of lively journalism, and in consolidating the position of lady-correspondents, as it was on the part of her companion to suppose that the cause of the Interviewer—a periodical of which he never formed a very definite conception—was, if subtly analysed (a task to which Mr. Bantling felt himself quite equal), but the cause of Miss Stackpole's coquetry. Each of these harmless confederates supplied at any rate a want of which the other was somewhat eagerly conscious. Mr. Bantling, who was of a rather slow and discursive habit, relished a prompt, keen, positive woman, who charmed him with the spectacle of a brilliant eye and a kind of bandbox neatness, and who kindled a perception of raciness in a mind to which the usual fare of life seemed unsalted. Henrietta, on the other hand, enjoyed the society of a fresh-looking, professionless gentleman, whose leisured state, though generally indefensible, was a decided advantage to Miss Stackpole, and who was furnished with an easy, traditional, though by no means exhaustive, answer to almost any social or practical question that could come up. She often found Mr. Bantling's answers very convenient, and in the press of catching the American post would make use of them in her correspondence. It was to be feared that she was indeed drifting toward those mysterious shallows as to which Isabel, wishing for a good-humoured retort, had warned her. There might be danger in store for Isabel; but it was scarcely to be hoped that Miss Stackpole, on her side, would find permanent safety in the adoption of second-hand views. Isabel continued to warn her,