LITMIR.BIZ

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over the grass in Winchester Square, which, although it had been peppered by the London soot, invited the tread to linger. Henrietta thought her blooming, easy-voiced bachelor, with his impressibility to feminine merit and his splendid range of suggestion, a very agreeable man, and she valued the opportunity he offered her. “I don’t know but I would go, if your sister should ask me. I think it would be my duty. What do you call her name?”

      “Pensil. It’s an odd name, but it isn’t a bad one.”

      “I think one name’s as good as another. But what’s her rank?”.

      “Oh, she’s a baron’s wife; a convenient sort of rank. You’re fine enough and you’re not too fine.”

      “I don’t know but what she’d be too fine for me. What do you call the place she lives in—Bedfordshire?”

      “She lives away in the northern corner of it. It’s a tiresome country, but I dare say you won’t mind it. I’ll try and run down while you’re there.”

      All this was very pleasant to Miss Stackpole, and she was sorry to be obliged to separate from Lady Pensil’s obliging brother. But it happened that she had met the day before, in Piccadilly, some friends whom she had not seen for a year: the Miss Climbers, two ladies from Wilmington, Delaware, who had been travelling on the Continent and were now preparing to re-embark. Henrietta had had a long interview with them on the Piccadilly pavement, and though the three ladies all talked at once they had not exhausted their store. It had been agreed therefore that Henrietta should come and dine with them in their lodgings in Jermyn Street at six o’clock on the morrow, and she now bethought herself of this engagement. She prepared to start for Jermyn Street, taking leave first of Ralph Touchett and Isabel, who, seated on garden chairs in another part of the enclosure, were occupied—if the term may be used—with an exchange of amenities less pointed than the practical colloquy of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling. When it had been settled between Isabel and her friend that they should be reunited at some reputable hour at Pratt’s Hotel, Ralph remarked that the latter must have a cab. She couldn’t walk all the way to Jermyn Street.

      “I suppose you mean it’s improper for me to walk alone!” Henrietta exclaimed. “Merciful powers, have I come to this?”

      “There’s not the slightest need of your walking alone,” Mr. Bantling gaily interposed. “I should be greatly pleased to go with you.”

      “I simply meant that you’d be late for dinner,” Ralph returned. “Those poor ladies may easily believe that we refuse, at the last, to spare you.”

      “You had better have a hansom, Henrietta,” said Isabel.

      “I’ll get you a hansom if you’ll trust me,” Mr. Bantling went on.

      “We might walk a little till we meet one.”

      “I don’t see why I shouldn’t trust him, do you?” Henrietta enquired of Isabel.

      “I don’t see what Mr. Bantling could do to you,” Isabel obligingly answered; “but, if you like, we’ll walk with you till you find your cab.”

      “Never mind; we’ll go alone. Come on, Mr. Bantling, and take care you get me a good one.”

      Mr. Bantling promised to do his best, and the two took their departure, leaving the girl and her cousin together in the square, over which a clear September twilight had now begun to gather. It was perfectly still; the wide quadrangle of dusky houses showed lights in none of the windows, where the shutters and blinds were closed; the pavements were a vacant expanse, and, putting aside two small children from a neighbouring slum, who, attracted by symptoms of abnormal animation in the interior, poked their faces between the rusty rails of the enclosure, the most vivid object within sight was the big red pillar-post on the southeast corner.

      “Henrietta will ask him to get into the cab and go with her to Jermyn Street,” Ralph observed. He always spoke of Miss Stackpole as Henrietta.

      “Very possibly,” said his companion.

      “Or rather, no, she won’t,” he went on. “But Bantling will ask leave to get in.”

      “Very likely again. I am very glad they are such good friends.”

      “She has made a conquest. He thinks her a brilliant woman. It may go far,” said Ralph.

      Isabel was briefly silent. “I call Henrietta a very brilliant woman, but I don’t think it will go far. They would never really know each other. He has not the least idea what she really is, and she has no just comprehension of Mr. Bantling.”

      “There’s no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding. But it ought not to be so difficult to understand Bob Bantling,” Ralph added. “He is a very simple organism.”

      “Yes, but Henrietta’s a simpler one still. And, pray, what am I to do?” Isabel asked, looking about her through the fading light, in which the limited landscape-gardening of the square took on a large and effective appearance. “I don’t imagine that you’ll propose that you and I, for our amusement, shall drive about London in a hansom.”

      “There’s no reason we shouldn’t stay here—if you don’t dislike it. It’s very warm; there will be half an hour yet before dark; and if you permit it I’ll light a cigarette.”

      “You may do what you please,” said Isabel, “if you’ll amuse me till seven o’clock. I propose at that hour to go back and partake of a simple and solitary repast—two poached eggs and a muffin—at Pratt’s Hotel.”

      “Mayn’t I dine with you?” Ralph asked.

      “No, you’ll dine at your club.”

      They had wandered back to their chairs in the centre of the square again, and Ralph had lighted his cigarette. It would have given him extreme pleasure to be present in person at the modest little feast she had sketched; but in default of this he liked even being forbidden. For the moment, however, he liked immensely being alone with her, in the thickening dusk, in the centre of the multitudinous town; it made her seem to depend upon him and to be in his power. This power he could exert but vaguely; the best exercise of it was to accept her decisions submissively which indeed there was already an emotion in doing. “Why won’t you let me dine with you?” he demanded after a pause.

      “Because I don’t care for it.”

      “I suppose you’re tired of me.”

      “I shall be an hour hence. You see I have the gift of foreknowledge.”

      “Oh, I shall be delightful meanwhile,” said Ralph.

      But he said nothing more, and as she made no rejoinder they sat some time in a stillness which seemed to contradict his promise of entertainment. It seemed to him she was preoccupied, and he wondered what she was thinking about; there were two or three very possible subjects. At last he spoke again. “Is your objection to my society this evening caused by your expectation of another visitor?”

      She turned her head with a glance of her clear, fair eyes. “Another visitor? What visitor should I have?”

      He had none to suggest; which made his question seem to himself silly as well as brutal. “You’ve a great many friends that I don’t know. You’ve a whole past from which I was perversely excluded.”

      “You were reserved for my future. You must remember that my past is over there across the water. There’s none of it here in London.”

      “Very good, then, since your future is seated beside you. Capital thing to have your future so handy.” And Ralph lighted another cigarette and reflected that Isabel probably meant she had received news that Mr. Caspar Goodwood had crossed to Paris. After he had lighted his cigarette he puffed it a while, and then he resumed. “I promised just now to be very amusing; but you see I don’t come up to the mark, and the fact is there’s a good deal of temerity in one’s undertaking to amuse a person like you. What do you care

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