meant then, in your telegram, was that her character’s independent.”
“I never know what I mean in my telegrams—especially those I send from America. Clearness is too expensive. Come down to your father.”
“It’s not yet a quarter to eight,” said Ralph.
“I must allow for his impatience,” Mrs. Touchett answered. Ralph knew what to think of his father’s impatience; but, making no rejoinder, he offered his mother his arm. This put it in his power, as they descended together, to stop her a moment on the middle landing of the staircase—the broad, low, wide-armed staircase of time-blackened oak which was one of the most striking features of Gardencourt. “You’ve no plan of marrying her?” he smiled.
“Marrying her? I should be sorry to play her such a trick! But apart from that, she’s perfectly able to marry herself. She has every facility.”
“Do you mean to say she has a husband picked out?”
“I don’t know about a husband, but there’s a young man in Boston—!”
Ralph went on; he had no desire to hear about the young man in Boston. “As my father says, they’re always engaged!”
His mother had told him that he must satisfy his curiosity at the source, and it soon became evident he should not want for occasion. He had a good deal of talk with his young kinswoman when the two had been left together in the drawing-room. Lord Warburton, who had ridden over from his own house, some ten miles distant, remounted and took his departure before dinner; and an hour after this meal was ended Mr. and Mrs. Touchett, who appeared to have quite emptied the measure of their forms, withdrew, under the valid pretext of fatigue, to their respective apartments. The young man spent an hour with his cousin; though she had been travelling half the day she appeared in no degree spent. She was really tired; she knew it, and knew she should pay for it on the morrow; but it was her habit at this period to carry exhaustion to the furthest point and confess to it only when dissimulation broke down. A fine hypocrisy was for the present possible; she was interested; she was, as she said to herself, floated. She asked Ralph to show her the pictures; there were a great many in the house, most of them of his own choosing. The best were arranged in an oaken gallery, of charming proportions, which had a sitting-room at either end of it and which in the evening was usually lighted. The light was insufficient to show the pictures to advantage, and the visit might have stood over to the morrow. This suggestion Ralph had ventured to make; but Isabel looked disappointed—smiling still, however—and said: “If you please I should like to see them just a little.” She was eager, she knew she was eager and now seemed so; she couldn’t help it. “She doesn’t take suggestions,” Ralph said to himself; but he said it without irritation; her pressure amused and even pleased him. The lamps were on brackets, at intervals, and if the light was imperfect it was genial. It fell upon the vague squares of rich colour and on the faded gilding of heavy frames; it made a sheen on the polished floor of the gallery. Ralph took a candlestick and moved about, pointing out the things he liked; Isabel, inclining to one picture after another, indulged in little exclamations and murmurs. She was evidently a judge; she had a natural taste; he was struck with that. She took a candlestick herself and held it slowly here and there; she lifted it high, and as she did so he found himself pausing in the middle of the place and bending his eyes much less upon the pictures than on her presence. He lost nothing, in truth, by these wandering glances, for she was better worth looking at than most works of art. She was undeniably spare, and ponderably light, and proveably tall; when people had wished to distinguish her from the other two Miss Archers they had always called her the willowy one. Her hair, which was dark even to blackness, had been an object of envy to many women; her light grey eyes, a little too firm perhaps in her graver moments, had an enchanting range of concession. They walked slowly up one side of the gallery and down the other, and then she said: “Well, now I know more than I did when I began!”
“You apparently have a great passion for knowledge,” her cousin returned.
“I think I have; most girls are horridly ignorant.”
“You strike me as different from most girls.”
“Ah, some of them would—but the way they’re talked to!” murmured Isabel, who preferred not to dilate just yet on herself. Then in a moment, to change the subject, “Please tell me—isn’t there a ghost?” she went on.
“A ghost?”
“A castle-spectre, a thing that appears. We call them ghosts in America.”
“So we do here, when we see them.”
“You do see them then? You ought to, in this romantic old house.”
“It’s not a romantic old house,” said Ralph. “You’ll be disappointed if you count on that. It’s a dismally prosaic one; there’s no romance here but what you may have brought with you.”
“I’ve brought a great deal; but it seems to me I’ve brought it to the right place.”
“To keep it out of harm, certainly; nothing will ever happen to it here, between my father and me.”
Isabel looked at him a moment. “Is there never any one here but your father and you?”
“My mother, of course.”
“Oh, I know your mother; she’s not romantic. Haven’t you other people?”
“Very few.”
“I’m sorry for that; I like so much to see people.”
“Oh, we’ll invite all the county to amuse you,” said Ralph.
“Now you’re making fun of me,” the girl answered rather gravely. “Who was the gentleman on the lawn when I arrived?”
“A county neighbour; he doesn’t come very often.”
“I’m sorry for that; I liked him,” said Isabel.
“Why, it seemed to me that you barely spoke to him,” Ralph objected.
“Never mind, I like him all the same. I like your father too, immensely.”
“You can’t do better than that. He’s the dearest of the dear.”
“I’m so sorry he is ill,” said Isabel.
“You must help me to nurse him; you ought to be a good nurse.”
“I don’t think I am; I’ve been told I’m not; I’m said to have too many theories. But you haven’t told me about the ghost,” she added.
Ralph, however, gave no heed to this observation. “You like my father and you like Lord Warburton. I infer also that you like my mother.”
“I like your mother very much, because—because—” And Isabel found herself attempting to assign a reason for her affection for Mrs. Touchett.
“Ah, we never know why!” said her companion, laughing.
“I always know why,” the girl answered. “It’s because she doesn’t expect one to like her. She doesn’t care whether one does or not.”
“So you adore her—out of perversity? Well, I take greatly after my mother,” said Ralph.
“I don’t believe you do at all. You wish people to like you, and you try to make them do it.”
“Good heavens, how you see through one!” he cried with a dismay that was not altogether jocular.
“But I like you all the same,” his cousin went on. “The way to clinch the matter will be to show me the ghost.”
Ralph shook his head sadly. “I might show it to you, but you’d never see it. The privilege isn’t given to every one; it’s not enviable. It has never been seen by a young, happy, innocent person like you. You must have suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable knowledge. In that way your eyes are opened to it. I saw it long ago,” said Ralph.
“I