LITMIR.BIZ

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if Warburton orders his tenants about as you do me.”

      “Lord Warburton’s a great radical,” Isabel said. “He has very advanced opinions.”

      “He has very advanced stone walls. His park’s enclosed by a gigantic iron fence, some thirty miles round,” Henrietta announced for the information of Mr. Osmond. “I should like him to converse with a few of our Boston radicals.”

      “Don’t they approve of iron fences?” asked Mr. Bantling.

      “Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were talking to YOU over something with a neat top-finish of broken glass.”

      “Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?” Osmond went on, questioning Isabel.

      “Well enough for all the use I have for him.”

      “And how much of a use is that?”

      “Well, I like to like him.”

      “‘Liking to like’— why, it makes a passion!” said Osmond.

      “No”— she considered —“keep that for liking to DISlike.”

      “Do you wish to provoke me then,” Osmond laughed, “to a passion for HIM?”

      She said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question with a disproportionate gravity. “No, Mr. Osmond; I don’t think I should ever dare to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate,” she more easily added, “is a very nice man.”

      “Of great ability?” her friend enquired.

      “Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks.”

      “As good as he’s good-looking do you mean? He’s very good-looking. How detestably fortunate!— to be a great English magnate, to be clever and handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to enjoy your high favour! That’s a man I could envy.”

      Isabel considered him with interest. “You seem to me to be always envying some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it’s poor Lord Warburton.”

      “My envy’s not dangerous; it wouldn’t hurt a mouse. I don’t want to destroy the people — I only want to BE them. You see it would destroy only myself.”

      “You’d like to be the Pope?” said Isabel.

      “I should love it — but I should have gone in for it earlier. But why”— Osmond reverted —“do you speak of your friend as poor?”

      “Women — when they are very, very good sometimes pity men after they’ve hurt them; that’s their great way of showing kindness,” said Ralph, joining in the conversation for the first time and with a cynicism so transparently ingenious as to be virtually innocent.

      “Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?” Isabel asked, raising her eyebrows as if the idea were perfectly fresh.

      “It serves him right if you have,” said Henrietta while the curtain rose for the ballet.

      Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next twenty-four hours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she encountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he stood before the lion of the collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come in with her companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert Osmond had his place, and the party, having ascended the staircase, entered the first and finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her alertly enough, but said in a moment that he was leaving the gallery. “And I’m leaving Rome,” he added. “I must bid you goodbye.” Isabel, inconsequently enough, was now sorry to hear it. This was perhaps because she had ceased to be afraid of his renewing his suit; she was thinking of something else. She was on the point of naming her regret, but she checked herself and simply wished him a happy journey; which made him look at her rather unlightedly. “I’m afraid you’ll think me very ‘volatile.’ I told you the other day I wanted so much to stop.”

      “Oh no; you could easily change your mind.”

      “That’s what I have done.”

      “Bon voyage then.”

      “You’re in a great hurry to get rid of me,” said his lordship quite dismally.

      “Not in the least. But I hate partings.”

      “You don’t care what I do,” he went on pitifully.

      Isabel looked at him a moment. “Ah,” she said, “you’re not keeping your promise!”

      He coloured like a boy of fifteen. “If I’m not, then it’s because I can’t; and that’s why I’m going.”

      “Good-bye then.”

      “Good-bye.” He lingered still, however. “When shall I see you again?”

      Isabel hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration: “Some day after you’re married.”

      “That will never be. It will be after you are.”

      “That will do as well,” she smiled.

      “Yes, quite as well. Good-bye.”

      They shook hands, and he left her alone in the glorious room, among the shining antique marbles. She sat down in the centre of the circle of these presences, regarding them vaguely, resting her eyes on their beautiful blank faces; listening, as it were, to their eternal silence. It is impossible, in Rome at least, to look long at a great company of Greek sculptures without feeling the effect of their noble quietude; which, as with a high door closed for the ceremony, slowly drops on the spirit the large white mantle of peace. I say in Rome especially, because the Roman air is an exquisite medium for such impressions. The golden sunshine mingles with them, the deep stillness of the past, so vivid yet, though it is nothing but a void full of names, seems to throw a solemn spell upon them. The blinds were partly closed in the windows of the Capitol, and a clear, warm shadow rested on the figures and made them more mildly human. Isabel sat there a long time, under the charm of their motionless grace, wondering to what, of their experience, their absent eyes were open, and how, to our ears, their alien lips would sound. The dark red walls of the room threw them into relief; the polished marble floor reflected their beauty. She had seen them all before, but her enjoyment repeated itself, and it was all the greater because she was glad again, for the time, to be alone. At last, however, her attention lapsed, drawn off by a deeper tide of life. An occasional tourist came in, stopped and stared a moment at the Dying Gladiator, and then passed out of the other door, creaking over the smooth pavement. At the end of half an hour Gilbert Osmond reappeared, apparently in advance of his companions. He strolled toward her slowly, with his hands behind him and his usual enquiring, yet not quite appealing smile. “I’m surprised to find you alone, I thought you had company.

      “So I have — the best.” And she glanced at the Antinous and the Faun.

      “Do you call them better company than an English peer?”

      “Ah, my English peer left me some time ago.” She got up, speaking with intention a little dryly.

      Mr. Osmond noted her dryness, which contributed for him to the interest of his question. “I’m afraid that what I heard the other evening is true: you’re rather cruel to that nobleman.”

      Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. “It’s not true. I’m scrupulously kind.”

      “That’s exactly what I mean!” Gilbert Osmond returned, and with such happy hilarity that his joke needs to be explained. We know that he was fond of originals, of rarities, of the superior and the exquisite; and now that he had seen Lord Warburton, whom he thought a very fine example of his race and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of taking to himself a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in his collection of choice objects by declining so noble a hand. Gilbert Osmond had a high appreciation of this particular patriciate; not so much for its distinction, which he thought easily surpassable, as for its solid actuality. He had never forgiven his

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