Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 3.djvu/145

 "Do you mean my disposition? It won't get spoiled," Isabel answered, smiling. "I am taking very good care of it. I am extremely struck," she added, turning away, "with the off-hand way in which you speak of a woman leaving her hushand. It's easy to see you have never had one!"

"Well," said Henrietta, as if she were beginning an argument, "nothing is more common in our western cities, and it is to them, after all, that we must look in the future." Her argument, however, does not concern this history, which has too many other threads to unwind. She announced to Ralph Touchett that she was ready to leave Rome by any train that he might designate, and Ralph immediately pulled himself together for departure. Isabel went to see him at the last, and he made the same remark that Henrietta had made. It struck him that Isabel was uncommonly glad to get rid of them all.

For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said in a low tone, with a quick smile—

"My dear Ralph!"

It was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he went on, in the same way, jocosely, ingenuously—"I've seen less of you than I might, but it's better than nothing. And then I have heard a great deal about you."

"I don't know from whom, leading the life you have done."

"From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else; I never let other people speak of you. They always say you are 'charming,' and that's so flat."

"I might have seen more of you, certainly," Isabel said. "But when one is married one has so much occupation."

"Fortunately I am not married. When you come to see me in England, I shall be able to entertain you with all the freedom of a bachelor." He continued to talk as if they should certainly