Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/443

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 435 She had a plan of making him travel northward with her cousin as soon as the first mild weather should allow it. Lord War- burton had brought Ralph to Rome, and Mr. Goodwood should take him away. There seemed a happy symmetry in this, and she was now intensely eager that Ralph should leave Rome. She had a constant fear that he would die there, and a horror of this event occurring at an inn, at her door, which she had so rarely entered. Ralph must sink to his last rest in his own dear house, in one of those deep, dim chambers of Gardencourt, where the dark ivy would cluster round the edges of the glimmering window. There seemed to Isabel in these days something sacred about Gardencourt ; no chapter of the past was more perfectly irrecoverable. When she thought of the months she had spent there the tears rose to her eyes. She flattered herself, as I say, upon her ingenuity, but she had need of all she could muster; for several events occurred which seemed to confront and defy her. The Countess Gemini arrived from Florence arrived with her trunks, her dresses, her chatter, her little fibs, her frivolity, the strange memory of her lovers. Edward Rosier, who had been away somewhere no one, not even Pansy, knew where reappeared in Rome and began to write her long letters, which she never answered. Madame Merle returned from Naples and said to her with a strange smile " What on earth did you do with Lord Warburton ? " As if it were any business of hers! XLVIII. ONE day, toward the end of February, Ralph Touchett made up his mind to return to England. He had his own reasons for this decision, which he was not bound to communicate ; but Henrietta Stackpole, to whom he mentioned his intention, flattered herself that she guessed them. She forbore to express them, however ; she only said, after a moment, as she sat by his sofa " I suppose you know that you can't go alone ? " " I have no idea of doing that," Ralph answered. " I shall have people with me." " What do you mean by ' people ' ? Servants, whom you pay 1 " " Ah," said Ralph, jocosely, " after all, they are human beings." " Are there any women among them 1 " Miss Stackpole inquired, calmly. F F 2