Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/186

178 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. see that it was a conviction. She wondered whether her aunt repented of having taken her own way so much ; but there waa no visible evidence of this no tears, no sighs, no exaggeration of a zeal which had always deemed itself sufficient. Mrs. Touchett seemed simply to feel the need of thinking things over and summing them up ; she had a little moral account- book with columns unerringly ruled, and a sharp steel clasp which she kept with exemplary neatness. " If I had foreseen this I would not have proposed your coming abroad now," she said to Isabel after Madame Merle had left the house. " I would have waited and sent for you next year." Her remarks had usually a practical ring. " So that perhaps I should never have known my uncle 1 It's a great happiness to me to have come now." " That's very well. But it was not that you might know your uncle that I brought you to Europe." A perfectly veracious speech ; but, as Isabel thought, not as perfectly timed. She had leisure to think of this and other matters. She took a solitary Walk every day, and spent much time in turning over the books in the library. Among the subjects that engaged her attention were the adventures of her friend Miss Stackpole, with whom she was in regular correspondence. Isabel liked her friend's private epistolary style better than her public ; that is, she thought her public letters would have been excellent if they had not been printed. Henrietta's career, however, was not so successful as might have been wished even in the interest of her private felicity ; that view of the inner life of Great Britain which she was so eager to take appeared to dance before her like an ignis fatuus. The invitation from Lady Pensil, for mysterious reasons, had never arrived ; and poor Mr. Bantling himself, with all his friendly ingenuity, had been unable to explain so grave a dereliction on the part of a missive that had obviously been sent. Mr. Bantling, however, had evidently taken Henrietta's affairs much to heart, and believed that he owed her a set-off to this illusory visit to Bedfordshire. " He says he should think I would go to the Continent," Henrietta wrote; "and as he thinks of going there himself, I suppose his advice is sincere. He wants to know why I don't take a view of French life ; and it is a fact that I want very much to see the new Republic. Mr. Bantling doesn't care much about the Republic, but he thinks of going over to Paris any way. I must say he is quite as attentive as I could wish, and at any rate I shall have seen one polite Englishman. I keep telling Mr.