Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 3.djvu/234

 that way and found her alone, everything might have been different. She might have had another life, and to-day she might have been a happier woman. She stopped in the gallery in front of a small picture—a beautiful and valuable Bonington—upon which her eyes rested for a long time. But she was not looking at the picture; she was wondering whether if her aunt had not come that day in Albany she would have married Caspar Goodwood.

Mrs. Touchett appeared at last, just after Isabel had returned to the big uninhabited drawing-room. She looked a good deal older, but her eye was as bright as ever and her head as erect; her thin lips seemed a repository of latent meanings. She wore a little grey dress, of the most undecorated fashion, and Isabel wondered, as she had wondered the first time, whether her remarkable kinswoman resembled more a queen-regent or the matron of a gaol. Her lips felt very thin indeed as Isabel kissed her.

"I have kept you waiting because I have been sitting with Ralph," Mrs. Touchett said. "The nurse had gone to her lunch and I had taken her place. He has a man who is supposed to look after him, but the man is good for nothing; he is always looking out of the window—as if there were anything to see! I didn't wish to move, because Ralph seemed to be sleeping, and I was afraid the sound would disturb him. I waited till the nurse came back; I remembered that you knew the house."

"I find I know it better even than I thought; I have been walking," Isabel answered. And then she asked whether Ralph slept much.

"He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn't move. But I am not sure that it's always sleep."

"Will he see me? Can he speak to me?"