back in her chair and looking round the room. "You've made a very good impression, and I'
for myself that you've received one. You've not come to Mrs. Touchett's seven times to oblige me."(ve seen) "The girl's not disagreeable," Osmond quietly conceded.
Madame Merle dropped her eye on him a moment, during which her lips closed with a certain
firmness. "Is that all you can find to say about that fine creature?"
"All? Isn't it enough? Of how many people have you heard me say more?"
She made no answer to this, but still presented her talkative grace to the room. "You're
unfathomable," she murmured at last. "I'm frightened at the abyss into which I shall have cast her."
He took it almost gaily. "You can't draw back--you've gone too far."
"Very good; but you must do the rest yourself."
"I shall do it," said Gilbert Osmond.
Madame Merle remained silent and he changed his place again; but when she rose to go he also
took leave. Mrs. Touchett's victoria was awaiting her guest in the court, and after he had helped his
friend into it he stood there detaining her. "You're very indiscreet," she said rather wearily; "you
shouldn't have moved when I did."
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He had taken off his hat; he passed his hand over his forehead. "I always forget; I'm out of the
habit."
"You're quite unfathomable," she repeated, glancing up at the windows of the house, a modern
structure in the new part of the town.
He paid no heed to this remark, but spoke in his own sense. "She's really very charming. I've
scarcely known any one more graceful."
"It does me good to hear you say that. The better you like her the better for me."
"I like her very much. She's all you described her, and into the bargain capable, I feel, of great
devotion. She has only one fault."
"What's that?"
"Too many ideas."
"I warned you she was clever."
"Fortunately they're very bad ones," said Osmond.
"Why is that fortunate?"
"Dame, if they must be sacrificed!"
Madame Merle leaned back, looking straight before her; then she spoke to the coachman. But her
friend again detained her. "If I go to Rome what shall I do with Pansy?"
"I'll go and see her," said Madame Merle.
CHAPTER XXVII
I may not attempt to report in its fulness our young woman's response to the deep appeal of Rome,
to analyse her feelings as she trod the pavement of the Forum or to number her pulsations as she
crossed the threshold of Saint Peter's. It is enough to say that her impression was such as might
have been expected of a person of her freshness and her eagerness. She had always been fond of
history, and here was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine. She had an
imagination that kindled at the mention of great deeds, and wherever she turned some great deed
had been acted. These things strongly moved her, but moved her all inwardly. It seemed to her
companions that she talked less than usual, and Ralph Touchett, when he appeared to be looking
listlessly and awkwardly over her head, was really dropping on her an intensity of observation. By
her own measure she was very happy; she would even have been willing to take these hours for the
happiest she was ever to know. The sense of the terrible human past was heavy to her, but that of
something altogether contemporary would suddenly give it wings that it could wave in the blue.
Her consciousness was so mixed that she scarcely knew where the different parts of it would lead
her, and she went about in a repressed ecstasy of contemplation, seeing often in the things she
looked at a great deal more than was there, and yet not seeing many of the items enumerated in her
Murray. Rome, as Ralph said, confessed to the psychological moment. The herd of reechoing
tourists had departed and most of the solemn places had relapsed into solemnity. The sky was a
blaze of blue, and the plash of the fountains in their mossy niches had lost its chill and doubled its
music. On the corners of the warm, bright streets one stumbled on bundles of flowers. Our friends
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had gone one afternoon--it was the third of their stay--to look at the latest excavations in the
Forum, these labours having been for some time previous largely extended. They had descended
from the modern street to the level of the Sacred Way, along which they wandered with a
reverence of step which was not the same on the part of each. Henrietta Stackpole was struck with
the fact that ancient Rome had been paved a good deal like New York, and even found an analogy
between the deep chariot-ruts traceable in the antique street and the overjangled iron grooves
which express the intensity of American life. The sun had begun to sink, the air was a golden haze,
and the long shadows of broken column and vague pedestal leaned across the field of ruin.
Henrietta wandered away with Mr. Bantling, whom it was apparently delightful to her to hear
speak of Julius Caesar as a "cheeky old boy," and Ralph addressed such elucidations as he was
prepared to offer to the attentive ear of our heroine. One of the humble archeologists who hover
about the place had put himself at the disposal of the two, and repeated his lesson with a fluency
which the decline of the season had done nothing to impair. A process of digging was on view in a
remote corner of the Forum, and he presently remarked that if it should please the signori to go and
watch it a little they might see something of interest. The proposal commended itself more to
Ralph than to Isabel, weary with much wandering; so that she admonished her companion to
satisfy his curiosity while she patiently awaited his return. The hour and the place were much to
her taste--she should enjoy being briefly alone. Ralph accordingly went off with the cicerone while
Isabel sat down on a prostrate column near the foundations of the Capitol. She wanted a short
solitude, but she was not long to enjoy it. Keen as was her interest in the rugged relics of the
Roman past that lay scattered about her and in which the corrosion of centuries had still left so
much of individual life, her thoughts, after resting a while on these things, had wandered, by a
concatenation of stages it might require some subtlety to trace, to regions and objects charged with
a more active appeal. From the Roman past to Isabel Archer's future was a long stride, but her
imagination had taken it in a single flight and now hovered in slow circles over the nearer and
richer field. She was so absorbed in her thoughts, as she bent her eyes upon a row of cracked but
not dislocated slabs covering the ground at her feet, that she had not heard the sound of
approaching footsteps before a shadow was thrown across the line of her vision. She looked up and
saw a gentleman--a gentleman who was not Ralph come back to say that the excavations were a
bore. This personage was startled as she was startled; he stood there baring his head to her
perceptibly pale surprise.
"Lord Warburton!" Isabel exclaimed as she rose.
"I had no idea it was you. I turned that corner and came upon you."
She looked about her to explain. "I'm alone, but my companions have just left me. My cousin's
gone to look at the work over there."
"Ah yes; I see." And Lord Warburton's eyes wandered vaguely in the direction she had indicated.
He stood firmly before her now; he had recovered his balance and seemed to wish to show it,
though very kindly. "Don't let me disturb you," he went on, looking at her dejected pillar. "I'm
afraid you're tired."
"Yes, I'm rather tired." She hesitated a moment, but sat down again. "Don't let me interrupt you,"
she added.
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"Oh dear, I'm quite alone, I've nothing on earth to do. I had no idea you were in Rome. I've just
come from the East. I'm only passing through."
"You've been making a long journey," said Isabel, who had learned from Ralph that Lord
Warburton was absent from England.
"Yes, I came abroad for six months--soon after I saw you last. I've been in Turkey and Asia Minor;
I came the other day from Athens." He managed not to be awkward, but he wasn't easy, and after a
longer look at the girl he came down to nature. "Do you wish me to leave you, or will you let me
stay a little?"
She took it all humanely. "I don't wish you to leave me, Lord Warburton; I'm very glad to see
you."
"Thank you for saying that. May I sit down?"
The fluted shaft on which she had taken her seat would have afforded a resting-place to several
persons, and there was plenty of room even for a highly-developed Englishman. This fine
specimen of that great class seated himself near our young lady, and in the course of five minutes
he had asked her several questions, taken rather at random and to which, as he put some of them
twice over, he apparently somewhat missed catching the answer; had given her too some
information about himself which was not wasted upon her calmer feminine sense. He repeated
more than once that he had not expected to meet her, and it was evident that the encounter touched
him in a way that would have made preparation advisable. He began abruptly to pass from the
impunity of things to their solemnity, and from their being delightful to their being impossible. He
was splendidly sunburnt; even his multitudinous beard had been burnished by the fire of Asia. He
was dressed in the loose-fitting, heterogeneous garments in which the English traveller in foreign
lands is wont to consult his comfort and affirm his nationality; and with his pleasant steady eyes,
his bronzed complexion, fresh beneath its seasoning, his manly figure, his minimising manner and
his general air of being a gentleman and an explorer, he was such a representative of the British
race as need not in any clime have been disavowed by those who have a kindness for it. Isabel
noted these things and was glad she had always liked him. He had kept, evidently in spite of
shocks, every one of his merits--properties these partaking of the essence of great decent houses, as
one might put it; resembling their innermost fixtures and ornaments, not subject to vulgar shifting
and removable only by some whole break-up. They talked of the matters naturally in order; her
uncle's death, Ralph's state of health, the way she had passed her winter, her visit to Rome, her
return to Florence, her plans for the summer, the hotel she was staying at; and then of Lord
Warburton's own adventures, movements, intentions, impressions and present domicile. At last
there was a silence, and it said so much more than either had said that it scarce needed his final
words. "I've written to you several times."
"Written to me? I've never had your letters."
"I never sent them. I burned them up."
"Ah," laughed Isabel, "it was better that you should do that than I!"
"I thought you wouldn't care for them," he went on with a simplicity that touched her. "It seemed
to me that after all I had no right to trouble you with letters."
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"I should have been very glad to have news of you. You know how I hoped that--that--" But she
stopped; there would be such a flatness in the utterance of her thought.
"I know what you're going to say. You hoped we should always remain good friends." This
formula, as Lord Warburton uttered it, was certainly flat enough; but then he was interested in
making it appear so.
She found herself reduced simply to "Please don't talk of all that"; a speech which hardly struck
her as improvement on the other.
"It's a small consolation to allow me!" her companion exclaimed with force.
"I can't pretend to console you," said the girl, who, all still as she sat there, threw herself back with
a sort of inward triumph on the answer that had satisfied him so little six months before. He was
pleasant, he was powerful, he was gallant; there was no better man than he. But her answer
remained.
"It's very well you don't try to console me; it wouldn't be in your power," she heard him say
through the medium of her strange elation.
"I hoped we should meet again, because I had no fear you would attempt to make me feel I had
wronged you. But when you do that-- the pain's greater than the pleasure." And she got up with a
small conscious majesty, looking for her companions.
"I don't want to make you feel that; of course I can't say that. I only just want you to know one or
two things--in fairness to myself, as it were. I won't return to the subject again. I felt very strongly
what I expressed to you last year; I couldn't think of anything else. I tried to forget--energetically,
systematically. I tried to take an interest in somebody else. I tell you this because I want you to
know I did my duty. I didn't succeed. It was for the same purpose I went abroad--as far away as
possible. They say travelling distracts the mind, but it didn't distract mine. I've thought of you
perpetually, ever since I last saw you. I'm exactly the same. I love you just as much, and
everything I said to you then is just as true. This instant at which I speak to you shows me again
exactly how, to my great misfortune, you just insuperably charm me. There--I can't say less. I don't
mean, however, to insist; it's only for a moment. I may add that when I came upon you a few
minutes since, without the smallest idea of seeing you, I was, upon my honour, in the very act of
wishing I knew where you were." He had recovered his self-control, and while he spoke it became
complete. He might have been addressing a small committee--making all quietly and clearly a
statement of importance; aided by an occasional look at a paper of notes concealed in his hat,
which he had not again put on. And the committee, assuredly, would have felt the point proved.
"I've often thought of you, Lord Warburton," Isabel answered. "You may be sure I shall always do
that." And she added in a tone of which she tried to keep up the kindness and keep down the
meaning: "There's no harm in that on either side."
They walked along together, and she was prompt to ask about his sisters and request him to let
them know she had done so. He made for the moment no further reference to their great question,
but dipped again into shallower and safer waters. But he wished to know when she was to leave
Rome, and on her mentioning the limit of her stay declared he was glad it was still so distant.
"Why do you say that if you yourself are only passing through?" she enquired with some anxiety.
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"Ah, when I said I was passing through I didn't mean that one would treat Rome as if it were
Clapham Junction. To pass through Rome is to stop a week or two."
"Say frankly that you mean to stay as long as I do!"
His flushed smile, for a little, seemed to sound her. "You won't like that. You're afraid you'll see
too much of me."
"It doesn't matter what I like. I certainly can't expect you to leave this delightful place on my
account. But I confess I'm afraid of you."
"Afraid I'll begin again? I promise to be very careful."
They had gradually stopped and they stood a moment face to face. "Poor Lord Warburton!" she
said with a compassion intended to be good for both of them.
"Poor Lord Warburton indeed! But I'll be careful."
"You may be unhappy, but you shall not make ME so. That I can't allow."
"If I believed I could make you unhappy I think I should try it." At this she walked in advance and
he also proceeded. "I'll never say a word to displease you."
"Very good. If you do, our friendship's at an end."
"Perhaps some day--after a while--you'll give me leave."
"Give you leave to make me unhappy?"
He hesitated. "To tell you again--" But he checked himself. "I'll keep it down. I'll keep it down
always."
Ralph Touchett had been joined in his visit to the excavation by Miss Stackpole and her attendant,
and these three now emerged from among the mounds of earth and stone collected round the
aperture and came into sight of Isabel and her companion. Poor Ralph hailed his friend with joy
qualified by wonder, and Henrietta exclaimed in a high voice "Gracious, there's that lord!" Ralph
and his English neighbour greeted with the austerity with which, after long separations, English
neighbours greet, and Miss Stackpole rested her large intellectual gaze upon the sunburnt traveller.
But she soon established her relation to the crisis. "I don't suppose you remember me, sir."
"Indeed I do remember you," said Lord Warburton. "I asked you to come and see me, and you
never came."
"I don't go everywhere I'm asked," Miss Stackpole answered coldly.
"Ah well, I won't ask you again," laughed the master of Lockleigh.
"If you do I'll go; so be sure!"
Lord Warburton, for all his hilarity, seemed sure enough. Mr. Bantling had stood by without
claiming a recognition, but he now took occasion to nod to his lordship, who answered him with a
friendly "Oh, you here, Bantling?" and a hand-shake.
"Well," said Henrietta, "I didn't know you knew him!"
"I guess you don't know every one I know," Mr. Bantling rejoined facetiously.
"I thought that when an Englishman knew a lord he always told you."
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"Ah, I'm afraid Bantling was ashamed of me," Lord Warburton laughed again. Isabel took pleasure
in that note; she gave a small sigh of relief as they kept their course homeward.
The next day was Sunday; she spent her morning over two long letters--one to her sister Lily, the
other to Madame Merle; but in neither of these epistles did she mention the fact that a rejected
suitor had threatened her with another appeal. Of a Sunday afternoon all good Romans (and the
best Romans are often the northern barbarians) follow the custom of going to vespers at Saint
Peter's; and it had been agreed among our friends that they would drive together to the great
church. After lunch, an hour before the carriage came, Lord Warburton presented himself at the
Hotel de Paris and paid a visit to the two ladies, Ralph Touchett and Mr. Bantling having gone out
together. The visitor seemed to have wished to give Isabel a proof of his intention to keep the
promise made her the evening before; he was both discreet and frank--not even dumbly
importunate or remotely intense. He thus left her to judge what a mere good friend he could be. He
talked about his travels, about Persia, about Turkey, and when Miss Stackpole asked him whether
it would "pay" for her to visit those countries assured her they offered a great field to female
enterprise. Isabel did him justice, but she wondered what his purpose was and what he expected to
gain even by proving the superior strain of his sincerity. If he expected to melt her by showing
what a good fellow he was, he might spare himself the trouble. She knew the superior strain of
everything about him, and nothing he could now do was required to light the view. Moreover his
being in Rome at all affected her as a complication of the wrong sort--she liked so complications
of the right. Nevertheless, when, on bringing his call to a close, he said he too should be at Saint
Peter's and should look out for her and her friends, she was obliged to reply that he must follow his
convenience.
In the church, as she strolled over its tesselated acres, he was the first person she encountered. She
had not been one of the superior tourists who are "disappointed" in Saint Peter's and find it smaller
than its fame; the first time she passed beneath the huge leathern curtain that strains and bangs at
the entrance, the first time she found herself beneath the far-arching dome and saw the light drizzle
down through the air thickened with incense and with the reflections of marble and gilt, of mosaic
and bronze, her conception of greatness rose and dizzily rose. After this it never lacked space to
soar. She gazed and wondered like a child or a peasant, she paid her silent tribute to the seated
sublime. Lord Warburton walked beside her and talked of Saint Sophia of Constantinople; she
feared for instance that he would end by calling attention to his exemplary conduct. The service
had not yet begun, but at Saint Peter's there is much to observe, and as there is something almost
profane in the vastness of the place, which seems meant as much for physical as for spiritual
exercise, the different figures and groups, the mingled worshippers and spectators, may follow
their various intentions without conflict or scandal. In that splendid immensity individual
indiscretion carries but a short distance. Isabel and her companions, however, were guilty of none;
for though Henrietta was obliged in candour to declare that Michael Angelo's dome suffered by
comparison with that of the Capitol at Washington, she addressed her protest chiefly to Mr.
Bantling's ear and reserved it in its more accentuated form for the columns of the Interviewer.
Isabel made the circuit of the church with his lordship, and as they drew near the choir on the left
of the entrance the voices of the Pope's singers were borne to them over the heads of the large
number of persons clustered outside the doors. They paused a while on the skirts of this crowd,
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composed in equal measure of Roman cockneys and inquisitive strangers, and while they stood
there the sacred concert went forward. Ralph, with Henrietta and Mr. Bantling, was apparently
within, where Isabel, looking beyond the dense group in front of her, saw the afternoon light,
silvered by clouds of incense that seemed to mingle with the splendid chant, slope through the
embossed recesses of high windows. After a while the singing stopped and then Lord Warburton
seemed disposed to move off with her. Isabel could only accompany him; whereupon she found
herself confronted with Gilbert Osmond, who appeared to have been standing at a short distance
behind her. He now approached with all the forms --he appeared to have multiplied them on this
occasion to suit the place.
"So you decided to come?" she said as she put out her hand.
"Yes, I came last night and called this afternoon at your hotel. They told me you had come here,
and I looked about for you."
"The others are inside," she decided to say.
"I didn't come for the others," he promptly returned.
She looked away; Lord Warburton was watching them; perhaps he had heard this. Suddenly she
remembered it to be just what he had said to her the morning he came to Gardencourt to ask her to
marry him. Mr. Osmond's words had brought the colour to her cheek, and this reminiscence had
not the effect of dispelling it. She repaired any betrayal by mentioning to each companion the
name of the other, and fortunately at this moment Mr. Bantling emerged from the choir, cleaving
the crowd with British valour and followed by Miss Stackpole and Ralph Touchett. I say
fortunately, but this is perhaps a superficial view of the matter; since on perceiving the gentleman
from Florence Ralph Touchett appeared to take the case as not committing him to joy. He didn't
hang back, however, from civility, and presently observed to Isabel, with due benevolence, that she
would soon have all her friends about her. Miss Stackpole had met Mr. Osmond in Florence, but
she had already found occasion to say to Isabel that she liked him no better than her other
