“Warning me?”
“Isn’t that why she came off alone with you here—to put you on your guard?”
“Oh dear, no,” said Lord Warburton brazenly; “our talk had no such solemn character as that.”
“Well, you’ve been on your guard—intensely. I suppose it’s natural to you; that’s just what I wanted to observe. And so, too, Miss Molyneux—she wouldn’t commit herself. You have been warned, anyway,” Henrietta continued, addressing this young lady; “but for you it wasn’t necessary.”
“I hope not,” said Miss Molyneux vaguely.
“Miss Stackpole takes notes,” Ralph soothingly explained. “She’s a great satirist; she sees through us all and she works us up.”
“Well, I must say I never have had such a collection of bad material!” Henrietta declared, looking from Isabel to Lord Warburton and from this nobleman to his sister and to Ralph. “There’s something the matter with you all; you’re as dismal as if you had got a bad cable.”
“You do see through us, Miss Stackpole,” said Ralph in a low tone, giving her a little intelligent nod as he led the party out of the gallery. “There’s something the matter with us all.”
Isabel came behind these two; Miss Molyneux, who decidedly liked her immensely, had taken her arm, to walk beside her over the polished floor. Lord Warburton strolled on the other side with his hands behind him and his eyes lowered. For some moments he said nothing; and then, “Is it true you’re going to London?” he asked.
“I believe it has been arranged.”
“And when shall you come back?”
“In a few days; but probably for a very short time. I’m going to Paris with my aunt.”
“When, then, shall I see you again?”
“Not for a good while,” said Isabel. “But some day or other, I hope.”
“Do you really hope it?”
“Very much.”
He went a few steps in silence; then he stopped and put out his hand. “Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said Isabel.
Miss Molyneux kissed her again, and she let the two depart. After it, without rejoining Henrietta and Ralph, she retreated to her own room; in which apartment, before dinner, she was found by Mrs. Touchett, who had stopped on her way to the salon. “I may as well tell you,” said that lady, “that your uncle has informed me of your relations with Lord Warburton.”
Isabel considered. “Relations? They’re hardly relations. That’s the strange part of it: he has seen me but three or four times.”
“Why did you tell your uncle rather than me?” Mrs. Touchett dispassionately asked.
Again the girl hesitated. “Because he knows Lord Warburton better.”
“Yes, but I know you better.”
“I’m not sure of that,” said Isabel, smiling.
“Neither am I, after all; especially when you give me that rather conceited look. One would think you were awfully pleased with yourself and had carried off a prize! I suppose that when you refuse an offer like Lord Warburton’s it’s because you expect to do something better.”
“Ah, my uncle didn’t say that!” cried Isabel, smiling still.
CHAPTER XV
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IT HAD BEEN ARRANGED that the two young ladies should proceed to London under Ralph’s escort, though Mrs. Touchett looked with little favour on the plan. It was just the sort of plan, she said, that Miss Stackpole would be sure to suggest, and she enquired if the correspondent of the Interviewer was to take the party to stay at her favourite boarding-house.
“I don’t care where she takes us to stay, so long as there’s local colour,” said Isabel. “That’s what we’re going to London for.”
“I suppose that after a girl has refused an English lord she may do anything,” her aunt rejoined. “After that one needn’t stand on trifles.”
“Should you have liked me to marry Lord Warburton?” Isabel enquired.
“Of course I should.”
“I thought you disliked the English so much.”
“So I do; but it’s all the greater reason for making use of them.”
“Is that your idea of marriage?” And Isabel ventured to add that her aunt appeared to her to have made very little use of Mr. Touchett.
“Your uncle’s not an English nobleman,” said Mrs. Touchett, “though even if he had been I should still probably have taken up my residence in Florence.”
“Do you think Lord Warburton could make me any better than I am?” the girl asked with some animation. “I don’t mean I’m too good to improve. I mean that I don’t love Lord Warburton enough to marry him.”
“You did right to refuse him then,” said Mrs. Touchett in her smallest, sparest voice. “Only, the next great offer you get, I hope you’ll manage to come up to your standard.”
“We had better wait till the offer comes before we talk about it. I hope very much I may have no more offers for the present. They upset me completely.”
“You probably won’t be troubled with them if you adopt permanently the Bohemian manner of life. However, I’ve promised Ralph not to criticise.”
“I’ll do whatever Ralph says is right,” Isabel returned. “I’ve unbounded confidence in Ralph.”
“His mother’s much obliged to you!” this lady dryly laughed.
“It seems to me indeed she ought to feel it!” Isabel irrepressibly answered.
Ralph had assured her that there would be no violation of decency in their paying a visit—the little party of three—to the sights of the metropolis; but Mrs. Touchett took a different view. Like many ladies of her country who had lived a long time in Europe, she had completely lost her native tact on such points, and in her reaction, not in itself deplorable, against the liberty allowed to young persons beyond the seas, had fallen into gratuitous and exaggerated scruples. Ralph accompanied their visitors to town and established them at a quiet inn in a street that ran at right angles to Piccadilly. His first idea had been to take them to his father’s house in Winchester Square, a large, dull mansion which at this period of the year was shrouded in silence and brown holland; but he bethought himself that, the cook being at Gardencourt, there was no one in the house to get them their meals, and Pratt’s Hotel accordingly became their resting-place. Ralph, on his side, found quarters in Winchester Square, having a “den” there of which he was very fond and being familiar with deeper fears than that of a cold kitchen. He availed himself largely indeed of the resources of Pratt’s Hotel, beginning his day with an early visit to his fellow travellers, who had Mr. Pratt in person, in a large bulging white waistcoat, to remove their dish-covers. Ralph turned up, as he said, after breakfast, and the little party made out a scheme of entertainment for the day. As London wears in the month of September a face blank but for its smears of prior service, the young man, who occasionally took an apologetic tone, was obliged to remind his companion, to Miss Stackpole’s high