Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/188

180 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. face absolutely void of its usual latent smile. She got up, and her movement and glance were a question. " It's all over," said Ralph. " Do you mean that my uncle ? " And Isabel stopped. " My father died an hour ago." " Ah, my poor Ralph ! " the girl murmured, putting out her hand to him. XX. SOME fortnight after this incident Madame Merle drove up in a hansom cab to the house in Winchester Square. As she descended from her vehicle she observed, suspended between the dining-room windows, a large, neat, wooden tablet, on whose fresh black ground were inscribed in white paint the words " This noble freehold mansion to be sold ; " with the name of the agent to whom application should be made. " They certainly lose no time," said the visitor, as, after sounding the big brass knocker, she waited to be admitted ; " it's a practical country ! " And within the house, as she ascended to the drawing-room, she perceived numerous signs of abdication ; pictures removed from the walls and placed upon sofas, windows undraped and floors laid bare. Mrs. Touchett presently received her, and intimated in a few words that condolences might be taken for granted. " I know what you are going to say he was a very good man. But I know it better than any one, because I gave him more chance to show it. In that I think I was a good wife." Mrs. Touchett added that at the end her husband apparently recognised this fact. " He has treated me liberally," she said ; " I won't say more liberally than I expected, because I didn't expect. You know that as a general thing I don't expect. But he chose, I presume, to recognise the fact that though I lived much abroad, and mingled you may say freely in foreign life, I never exhibited the smallest preference for any one else." " For any one but yourself," Madame Merle mentally observed; but the reflection was perfectly inaudible. " I never sacrificed my husband to another," Mrs, Touchett continued, with her stout curtness. " Oh no," thought Madame Merle ; " you never did anything for another ! " There was a certain cynicism in these mute commenis which demands an explanation ; the more so as they are not in accord