The Portrait of a Lady

had she that pretended to be larger than these large these fabulous occasions? If she wouldn’t do such a thing as that then she must do great things, she must do something greater. Poor Isabel found ground to remind herself from time to time that she must not be too proud, and nothing could be more sincere than her prayer to be delivered from such a danger: the isolation and loneliness of pride had for her mind the horror of a desert place. If it had been pride that interfered with her accepting Lord Warburton such a bêtise was singularly misplaced; and she was so conscious of liking him that she ventured to assure herself it was the very softness, and the fine intelligence, of sympathy. She liked him too much to marry him, that was the truth; something assured her there was a fallacy somewhere in the glowing logic of the proposition⁠—as he saw it⁠—even though she mightn’t put her very finest finger-point on it; and to inflict upon a man who offered so much a wife with a tendency to criticise would be a peculiarly discreditable act. She had promised him she would consider his question, and when, after he had left her, she wandered back to the bench where he had found her and lost herself in meditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her vow. But this was not the case; she was wondering if she were not a cold, hard, priggish person, and, on her at last getting up and going rather quickly back to the house, felt, as she had said to her friend, really frightened at herself.

XIII

It was this feeling and not the wish to ask advice⁠—she had no desire whatever for that⁠—that led her to speak to her uncle of what had taken place. She wished to speak to someone; she should feel more natural, more human, and her uncle, for this purpose, presented himself in a more attractive light than either her aunt or her friend Henrietta. Her cousin of course was a possible confidant; but she would have had to do herself violence to air this special secret to Ralph. So the next day, after breakfast, she sought her occasion. Her uncle never left his apartment till the afternoon, but he received his cronies, as he said, in his dressing-room. Isabel had quite taken her place in the class so designated, which, for the rest, included the old man’s son, his physician, his personal servant, and even Miss Stackpole. Mrs. Touchett did not figure in the list, and this was an obstacle the less to Isabel’s finding her host alone. He sat in a complicated mechanical chair, at the open window of his room, looking westward over the park and the river, with his newspapers and letters piled up beside him, his toilet freshly and minutely made, and his smooth, speculative face composed to benevolent expectation.

She approached her point directly. “I think I ought to let you know that Lord Warburton has asked me to marry him. I suppose I ought to tell my aunt; but it seems best to tell you first.”

The old man expressed no surprise, but thanked her for the confidence she showed him. “Do you mind telling me whether you accepted him?” he then enquired.

“I’ve not answered him definitely yet; I’ve taken a little time to think of it, because that seems more respectful. But I shall not accept him.”

Mr. Touchett made no comment upon this; he had the air of thinking that, whatever interest he might take in the matter from the point of view of sociability, he had no active voice in it. “Well, I told you you’d be a success over here. Americans are highly appreciated.”

“Very highly indeed,” said Isabel. “But at the cost of seeming both tasteless and ungrateful, I don’t think I can marry Lord Warburton.”

“Well,” her uncle went on, “of course an old man can’t judge for a young lady. I’m glad you didn’t ask me before you made up your mind. I suppose I ought to tell you,” he added slowly, but as if it were not of much consequence, “that I’ve known all about it these three days.”

“About Lord Warburton’s state of mind?”

“About his intentions, as they say here. He wrote me a very pleasant letter, telling me all about them. Should you like to see his letter?” the old man obligingly asked.

“Thank you; I don’t think I care about that. But I’m glad he wrote to you; it was right that he should, and he would be certain to do what was right.”

“Ah well, I guess you do like him!” Mr. Touchett declared. “You needn’t pretend you don’t.”

“I like him extremely; I’m very free to admit that. But I don’t wish to marry anyone just now.”

“You think someone may come along whom you may like better. Well, that’s very likely,” said Mr. Touchett, who appeared to wish to show his kindness to the girl by easing off her decision, as it were, and finding cheerful reasons for it.

“I don’t care if I don’t meet anyone else. I like Lord Warburton quite well enough.” She fell into that appearance of a sudden change of point of view with which she sometimes startled and even displeased her interlocutors.

Her uncle, however, seemed proof against either of these impressions. “He’s a very fine man,” he resumed in a tone which might have passed for that of encouragement. “His letter was one of the pleasantest I’ve received for some weeks. I suppose one of the reasons I liked it was that it was all about you; that is all except the part that was about himself. I suppose he told you all that.”

“He would have told me everything I wished to ask him,” Isabel said.

“But you didn’t feel curious?”

“My curiosity would have been idle⁠—once I had determined to decline his offer.”

“You didn’t find it sufficiently attractive?” Mr. Touchett enquired.

She was silent a little. “I