discussing the subject and found Henrietta wanting in delicacy.
"I asked him, and he said he meant to do nothing," Miss Stackpole answered. "But I don't believe
that; he's not a man to do nothing. He is a man of high, bold action. Whatever happens to him he'll
always do something, and whatever he does will always be right."
"I quite believe that." Henrietta might be wanting in delicacy, but it touched the girl, all the same,
to hear this declaration.
"Ah, you do care for him!" her visitor rang out.
"Whatever he does will always be right," Isabel repeated. "When a man's of that infallible mould
what does it matter to him what one feels?"
"It may not matter to him, but it matters to one's self."
"Ah, what it matters to me--that's not what we're discussing," said Isabel with a cold smile.
This time her companion was grave. "Well, I don't care; you have changed. You're not the girl you
were a few short weeks ago, and Mr. Goodwood will see it. I expect him here any day."
"I hope he'll hate me then," said Isabel.
"I believe you hope it about as much as I believe him capable of it."
To this observation our heroine made no return; she was absorbed in the alarm given her by
Henrietta's intimation that Caspar Goodwood would present himself at Gardencourt. She pretended
to herself, however, that she thought the event impossible, and, later, she communicated her
disbelief to her friend. For the next forty-eight hours, nevertheless, she stood prepared to hear the
young man's name announced. The feeling pressed upon her; it made the air sultry, as if there were
to be a change of weather; and the weather, socially speaking, had been so agreeable during
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Isabel's stay at Gardencourt that any change would be for the worse. Her suspense indeed was
dissipated the second day. She had walked into the park in company with the sociable Bunchie,
and after strolling about for some time, in a manner at once listless and restless, had seated herself
on a garden-bench, within sight of the house, beneath a spreading beech, where, in a white dress
ornamented with black ribbons, she formed among the flickering shadows a graceful and
harmonious image. She entertained herself for some moments with talking to the little terrier, as to
whom the proposal of an ownership divided with her cousin had been applied as impartially as
possible--as impartially as Bunchie's own somewhat fickle and inconstant sympathies would allow.
But she was notified for the first time, on this occasion, of the finite character of Bunchie's
intellect; hitherto she had been mainly struck with its extent. It seemed to her at last that she would
do well to take a book; formerly, when heavy-hearted, she had been able, with the help of some
well-chosen volume, to transfer the seat of consciousness to the organ of pure reason. Of late, it
was not to be denied, literature had seemed a fading light, and even after she had reminded herself
that her uncle's library was provided with a complete set of those authors which no gentleman's
collection should be without, she sat motionless and empty-handed, her eyes bent on the cool green
turf of the lawn. Her meditations were presently interrupted by the arrival of a servant who handed
her a letter. The letter bore the London postmark and was addressed in a hand she knew--that came
into her vision, already so held by him, with the vividness of the writer's voice or his face. This
document proved short and may be given entire.
MY DEAR MISS ARCHER--I don't know whether you will have heard of my coming to England,
but even if you have not it will scarcely be a surprise to you. You will remember that when you
gave me my dismissal at Albany, three months ago, I did not accept it. I protested against it. You
in fact appeared to accept my protest and to admit that I had the right on my side. I had come to see
you with the hope that you would let me bring you over to my conviction; my reasons for
entertaining this hope had been of the best. But you disappointed it; I found you changed, and you
were able to give me no reason for the change. You admitted that you were unreasonable, and it
was the only concession you would make; but it was a very cheap one, because that's not your
character. No, you are not, and you never will be, arbitrary or capricious. Therefore it is that I
believe you will let me see you again. You told me that I'm not disagreeable to you, and I believe
it; for I don't see why that should be. I shall always think of you; I shall never think of any one
else. I came to England simply because you are here; I couldn't stay at home after you had gone: I
hated the country because you were not in it. If I like this country at present it is only because it
holds you. I have been to England before, but have never enjoyed it much. May I not come and see
you for half an hour? This at present is the dearest wish of yours faithfully
CASPAR GOODWOOD.
Isabel read this missive with such deep attention that she had not perceived an approaching tread
on the soft grass. Looking up, however, as she mechanically folded it she saw Lord Warburton
standing before her.
CHAPTER XII
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She put the letter into her pocket and offered her visitor a smile of welcome, exhibiting no trace of
discomposure and half surprised at her coolness.
"They told me you were out here," said Lord Warburton; "and as there was no one in the drawing-
room and it's really you that I wish to see, I came out with no more ado."
Isabel had got up; she felt a wish, for the moment, that he should not sit down beside her. "I was
just going indoors."
"Please don't do that; it's much jollier here; I've ridden over from Lockleigh; it's a lovely day." His
smile was peculiarly friendly and pleasing, and his whole person seemed to emit that radiance of
good-feeling and good fare which had formed the charm of the girl's first impression of him. It
surrounded him like a zone of fine June weather.
"We'll walk about a little then," said Isabel, who could not divest herself of the sense of an
intention on the part of her visitor and who wished both to elude the intention and to satisfy her
curiosity about it. It had flashed upon her vision once before, and it had given her on that occasion,
as we know, a certain alarm. This alarm was composed of several elements, not all of which were
disagreeable; she had indeed spent some days in analysing them and had succeeded in separating
the pleasant part of the idea of Lord Warburton's "making up" to her from the painful. It may
appear to some readers that the young lady was both precipitate and unduly fastidious; but the
latter of these facts, if the charge be true, may serve to exonerate her from the discredit of the
former. She was not eager to convince herself that a territorial magnate, as she had heard Lord
Warburton called, was smitten with her charms; the fact of a declaration from such a source
carrying with it really more questions than it would answer. She had received a strong impression
of his being a "personage," and she had occupied herself in examining the image so conveyed. At
the risk of adding to the evidence of her self-sufficiency it must be said that there had been
moments when this possibility of admiration by a personage represented to her an aggression
almost to the degree of an affront, quite to the degree of an inconvenience. She had never yet
known a personage; there had been no personages, in this sense, in her life; there were probably
none such at all in her native land. When she had thought of individual eminence she had thought
of it on the basis of character and wit--of what one might like in a gentleman's mind and in his talk.
She herself was a character --she couldn't help being aware of that; and hitherto her visions of a
completed consciousness had concerned themselves largely with moral images--things as to which
the question would be whether they pleased her sublime soul. Lord Warburton loomed up before
her, largely and brightly, as a collection of attributes and powers which were not to be measured by
this simple rule, but which demanded a different sort of appreciation--an appreciation that the girl,
with her habit of judging quickly and freely, felt she lacked patience to bestow. He appeared to
demand of her something that no one else, as it were, had presumed to do. What she felt was that a
territorial, a political, a social magnate had conceived the design of drawing her into the system in
which he rather invidiously lived and moved. A certain instinct, not imperious, but persuasive, told
her to resist-- murmured to her that virtually she had a system and an orbit of her own. It told her
other things besides--things which both contradicted and confirmed each other; that a girl might do
much worse than trust herself to such a man and that it would be very interesting to see something
of his system from his own point of view; that on the other hand, however, there was evidently a
great deal of it which she should regard only as a complication of every hour, and that even in the
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whole there was something stiff and stupid which would make it a burden. Furthermore there was
a young man lately come from America who had no system at all, but who had a character of
which it was useless for her to try to persuade herself that the impression on her mind had been
light. The letter she carried in her pocket all sufficiently reminded her of the contrary. Smile not,
however, I venture to repeat, at this simple young woman from Albany who debated whether she
should accept an English peer before he had offered himself and who was disposed to believe that
on the whole she could do better. She was a person of great good faith, and if there was a great
deal of folly in her wisdom those who judge her severely may have the satisfaction of finding that,
later, she became consistently wise only at the cost of an amount of folly which will constitute
almost a direct appeal to charity.
Lord Warburton seemed quite ready to walk, to sit or to do anything that Isabel should propose,
and he gave her this assurance with his usual air of being particularly pleased to exercise a social
virtue. But he was, nevertheless, not in command of his emotions, and as he strolled beside her for
a moment, in silence, looking at her without letting her know it, there was something embarrassed
in his glance and his misdirected laughter. Yes, assuredly--as we have touched on the point, we
may return to it for a moment again--the English are the most romantic people in the world and
Lord Warburton was about to give an example of it. He was about to take a step which would
astonish all his friends and displease a great many of them, and which had superficially nothing to
recommend it. The young lady who trod the turf beside him had come from a queer country across
the sea which he knew a good deal about; her antecedents, her associations were very vague to his
mind except in so far as they were generic, and in this sense they showed as distinct and
unimportant. Miss Archer had neither a fortune nor the sort of beauty that justifies a man to the
multitude, and he calculated that he had spent about twenty-six hours in her company. He had
summed up all this--the perversity of the impulse, which had declined to avail itself of the most
liberal opportunities to subside, and the judgement of mankind, as exemplified particularly in the
more quickly-judging half of it: he had looked these things well in the face and then had dismissed
them from his thoughts. He cared no more for them than for the rosebud in his buttonhole. It is the
good fortune of a man who for the greater part of a lifetime has abstained without effort from
making himself disagreeable to his friends, that when the need comes for such a course it is not
discredited by irritating associations.
"I hope you had a pleasant ride," said Isabel, who observed her companion's hesitancy.
"It would have been pleasant if for nothing else than that it brought me here."
"Are you so fond of Gardencourt?" the girl asked, more and more sure that he meant to make some
appeal to her; wishing not to challenge him if he hesitated, and yet to keep all the quietness of her
reason if he proceeded. It suddenly came upon her that her situation was one which a few weeks
ago she would have deemed deeply romantic: the park of an old English country-house, with the
foreground embellished by a "great" (as she supposed) nobleman in the act of making love to a
young lady who, on careful inspection, should be found to present remarkable analogies with
herself. But if she was now the heroine of the situation she succeeded scarcely the less in looking
at it from the outside.
"I care nothing for Gardencourt," said her companion. "I care only for you."
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"You've known me too short a time to have a right to say that, and I can't believe you're serious."
These words of Isabel's were not perfectly sincere, for she had no doubt whatever that he himself
was. They were simply a tribute to the fact, of which she was perfectly aware, that those he had
just uttered would have excited surprise on the part of a vulgar world. And, moreover, if anything
beside the sense she had already acquired that Lord Warburton was not a loose thinker had been
needed to convince her, the tone in which he replied would quite have served the purpose.
"One's right in such a matter is not measured by the time, Miss Archer; it's measured by the feeling
itself. If I were to wait three months it would make no difference; I shall not be more sure of what I
mean than I am to-day. Of course I've seen you very little, but my impression dates from the very
first hour we met. I lost no time, I fell in love with you then. It was at first sight, as the novels say;
I know now that's not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels for evermore. Those two
days I spent here settled it; I don't know whether you suspected I was doing so, but I paid-mentally
speaking I mean-- the greatest possible attention to you. Nothing you said, nothing you did, was
lost upon me. When you came to Lockleigh the other day--or rather when you went away--I was
perfectly sure. Nevertheless I made up my mind to think it over and to question myself narrowly.
I've done so; all these days I've done nothing else. I don't make mistakes about such things; I'm a
very judicious animal. I don't go off easily, but when I'm touched, it's for life. It's for life, Miss
Archer, it's for life," Lord Warburton repeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest voice Isabel
had ever heard, and looking at her with eyes charged with the light of a passion that had sifted
itself clear of the baser parts of emotion--the heat, the violence, the unreason--and that burned as
steadily as a lamp in a windless place.
By tacit consent, as he talked, they had walked more and more slowly, and at last they stopped and
he took her hand. "Ah, Lord Warburton, how little you know me!" Isabel said very gently. Gently
too she drew her hand away.
"Don't taunt me with that; that I don't know you better makes me unhappy enough already; it's all
my loss. But that's what I want, and it seems to me I'm taking the best way. If you'll be my wife,
then I shall know you, and when I tell you all the good I think of you you'll not be able to say it's
from ignorance."
"If you know me little I know you even less," said Isabel.
"You mean that, unlike yourself, I may not improve on acquaintance? Ah, of course that's very
possible. But think, to speak to you as I do, how determined I must be to try and give satisfaction!
You do like me rather, don't you?"
"I like you very much, Lord Warburton," she answered; and at this moment she liked him
immensely.
"I thank you for saying that; it shows you don't regard me as a stranger. I really believe I've filled
all the other relations of life very creditably, and I don't see why I shouldn't fill this one--in which I
offer myself to you--seeing that I care so much more about it. Ask the people who know me well;
I've friends who'll speak for me."
"I don't need the recommendation of your friends," said Isabel.
"Ah now, that's delightful of you. You believe in me yourself."
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"Completely," Isabel declared. She quite glowed there, inwardly, with the pleasure of feeling she
did.
The light in her companion's eyes turned into a smile, and he gave a long exhalation of joy. "If
you're mistaken, Miss Archer, let me lose all I possess!"
She wondered whether he meant this for a reminder that he was rich, and, on the instant, felt sure
that he didn't. He was thinking that, as he would have said himself; and indeed he might safely
leave it to the memory of any interlocutor, especially of one to whom he was offering his hand.
Isabel had prayed that she might not be agitated, and her mind was tranquil enough, even while she
listened and asked herself what it was best she should say, to indulge in this incidental criticism.
What she should say, had she asked herself? Her foremost wish was to say something if possible
not less kind than what he had said to her. His words had carried perfect conviction with them; she
felt she did, all so mysteriously, matter to him. "I thank you more than I can say for your offer,"
she returned at last. "It does me great honour."
"Ah, don't say that!" he broke out. "I was afraid you'd say something like that. I don't see what
you've to do with that sort of thing. I don't see why you should thank me--it's I who ought to thank
you for listening to me: a man you know so little coming down on you with such a thumper! Of
course it's a great question; I must tell you that I'd rather ask it than have it to answer myself. But
the way you've listened--or at least your having listened at all--gives me some hope."
"Don't hope too much," Isabel said.
"Oh Miss Archer!" her companion murmured, smiling again, in his seriousness, as if such a
warning might perhaps be taken but as the play of high spirits, the exuberance of elation.
"Should you be greatly surprised if I were to beg you not to hope at all?" Isabel asked.
"Surprised? I don't know what you mean by surprise. It wouldn't be that; it would be a feeling very
much worse."
Isabel walked on again; she was silent for some minutes. "I'm very sure that, highly as I already
think of you, my opinion of you, if I should know you well, would only rise. But I'm by no means
sure that you wouldn't be disappointed. And I say that not in the least out of conventional modesty;
it's perfectly sincere."
"I'm willing to risk it, Miss Archer," her companion replied.
"It's a great question, as you say. It's a very difficult question."
"I don't expect you of course to answer it outright. Think it over as long as may be necessary. If I
can gain by waiting I'll gladly wait a long time. Only remember that in the end my dearest
happiness depends on your answer."
"I should be very sorry to keep you in suspense," said Isabel.
"Oh, don't mind. I'd much rather have a good answer six months hence than a bad one to-day."
"But it's very probable that even six months hence I shouldn't be able to give you one that you'd
think good."
"Why not, since you really like me?"
"Ah, you must never doubt that," said Isabel.
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"Well then, I don't see what more you ask!"
"It's not what I ask; it's what I can give. I don't think I should suit you; I really don't think I
should."
"You needn't worry about that. That's my affair. You needn't be a better royalist than the king."
"It's not only that," said Isabel; "but I'm not sure I wish to marry any one."
"Very likely you don't. I've no doubt a great many women begin that way," said his lordship, who,
be it averred, did not in the least believe in the axiom he thus beguiled his anxiety by uttering. "But
they're frequently persuaded."
"Ah, that's because they want to be!" And Isabel lightly laughed. Her suitor's countenance fell, and
he looked at her for a while in silence. "I'm afraid it's my being an Englishman that makes you
hesitate," he said presently. "I know your uncle thinks you ought to marry in your own country."
Isabel listened to this assertion with some interest; it had never occurred to her that Mr. Touchett
was likely to discuss her matrimonial prospects with Lord Warburton. "Has he told you that?"
"I remember his making the remark. He spoke perhaps of Americans generally."
"He appears himself to have found it very pleasant to live in England." Isabel spoke in a manner
that might have seemed a little perverse, but which expressed both her constant perception of her
uncle's outward felicity and her general disposition to elude any obligation to take a restricted
view.
It gave her companion hope, and he immediately cried with warmth: "Ah, my dear Miss Archer,
old England's a very good sort of country, you know! And it will be still better when we've
furbished it up a little."
"Oh, don't furbish it, Lord Warburton--, leave it alone. I like it this way."
"Well then, if you like it, I'm more and more unable to see your objection to what I propose."
"I'm afraid I can't make you understand."
"You ought at least to try. I've a fair intelligence. Are you afraid--afraid of the climate? We can
easily live elsewhere, you know. You can pick out your climate, the whole world over."
These words were uttered with a breadth of candour that was like the embrace of strong arms--that
was like the fragrance straight in her face, and by his clean, breathing lips, of she knew not what
strange gardens, what charged airs. She would have given her little finger at that moment to feel
strongly and simply the impulse to answer: "Lord Warburton, it's impossible for me to do better in
this wonderful world, I think, than commit myself, very gratefully, to your loyalty." But though
she was lost in admiration of her opportunity she managed to move back into the deepest shade of
it, even as some wild, caught creature in a vast cage. The "splendid" security so offered her was
not the greatest she could conceive. What she finally bethought herself of saying was something
very different--something that deferred the need of really facing her crisis. "Don't think me unkind
if I ask you to say no more about this to-day."
"Certainly, certainly!" her companion cried. "I wouldn't bore you for the world."
"You've given me a great deal to think about, and I promise you to do it justice."
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"That's all I ask of you, of course--and that you'll remember how absolutely my happiness is in
your hands."
Isabel listened with extreme respect to this admonition, but she said after a minute: "I must tell you
