LITMIR.BIZ

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Ralph said to himself; but he said it without irritation; her pressure amused and even pleased him. The lamps were on brackets, at intervals, and if the light was imperfect it was genial. It fell upon the vague squares of rich colour and on the faded gilding of heavy frames; it made a sheen on the polished floor of the gallery. Ralph took a candlestick and moved about, pointing out the things he liked; Isabel, inclining to one picture after another, indulged in little exclamations and murmurs. She was evidently a judge; she had a natural taste; he was struck with that. She took a candlestick herself and held it slowly here and there; she lifted it high, and as she did so he found himself pausing in the middle of the place and bending his eyes much less upon the pictures than on her presence. He lost nothing, in truth, by these wandering glances, for she was better worth looking at than most works of art. She was undeniably spare, and ponderably light, and proveably tall; when people had wished to distinguish her from the other two Miss Archers they had always called her the willowy one. Her hair, which was dark even to blackness, had been an object of envy to many women; her light grey eyes, a little too firm perhaps in her graver moments, had an enchanting range of concession. They walked slowly up one side of the gallery and down the other, and then she said: “Well, now I know more than I did when I began!”

      “You apparently have a great passion for knowledge,” her cousin returned.

      “I think I have; most girls are horridly ignorant.”

      “You strike me as different from most girls.”

      “Ah, some of them would – but the way they're talked to!” murmured Isabel, who preferred not to dilate just yet on herself. Then in a moment, to change the subject, “Please tell me – isn't there a ghost?” she went on.

      “A ghost?”

      “A castle-spectre, a thing that appears. We call them ghosts in America.”

      “So we do here, when we see them.”

      “You do see them then? You ought to, in this romantic old house.”

      “It's not a romantic old house,” said Ralph. “You'll be disappointed if you count on that. It's a dismally prosaic one; there's no romance here but what you may have brought with you.”

      “I've brought a great deal; but it seems to me I've brought it to the right place.”

      “To keep it out of harm, certainly; nothing will ever happen to it here, between my father and me.”

      Isabel looked at him a moment. “Is there never any one here but your father and you?”

      “My mother, of course.”

      “Oh, I know your mother; she's not romantic. Haven't you other people?”

      “Very few.”

      “I'm sorry for that; I like so much to see people.”

      “Oh, we'll invite all the county to amuse you,” said Ralph.

      “Now you're making fun of me,” the girl answered rather gravely. “Who was the gentleman on the lawn when I arrived?”

      “A county neighbour; he doesn't come very often.”

      “I'm sorry for that; I liked him,” said Isabel.

      “Why, it seemed to me that you barely spoke to him,” Ralph objected.

      “Never mind, I like him all the same. I like your father too, immensely.”

      “You can't do better than that. He's the dearest of the dear.”

      “I'm so sorry he is ill,” said Isabel.

      “You must help me to nurse him; you ought to be a good nurse.”

      “I don't think I am; I've been told I'm not; I'm said to have too many theories. But you haven't told me about the ghost,” she added.

      Ralph, however, gave no heed to this observation. “You like my father and you like Lord Warburton. I infer also that you like my mother.”

      “I like your mother very much, because – because – ” And Isabel found herself attempting to assign a reason for her affection for Mrs. Touchett.

      “Ah, we never know why!” said her companion, laughing.

      “I always know why,” the girl answered. “It's because she doesn't expect one to like her. She doesn't care whether one does or not.”

      “So you adore her – out of perversity? Well, I take greatly after my mother,” said Ralph.

      “I don't believe you do at all. You wish people to like you, and you try to make them do it.”

      “Good heavens, how you see through one!” he cried with a dismay that was not altogether jocular.

      “But I like you all the same,” his cousin went on. “The way to clinch the matter will be to show me the ghost.”

      Ralph shook his head sadly. “I might show it to you, but you'd never see it. The privilege isn't given to every one; it's not enviable. It has never been seen by a young, happy, innocent person like you. You must have suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable knowledge. In that way your eyes are opened to it. I saw it long ago,” said Ralph.

      “I told you just now I'm very fond of knowledge,” Isabel answered.

      “Yes, of happy knowledge – of pleasant knowledge. But you haven't suffered, and you're not made to suffer. I hope you'll never see the ghost!”

      She had listened to him attentively, with a smile on her lips, but with a certain gravity in her eyes. Charming as he found her, she had struck him as rather presumptuous – indeed it was a part of her charm; and he wondered what she would say. “I'm not afraid, you know,” she said: which seemed quite presumptuous enough.

      “You're not afraid of suffering?”

      “Yes, I'm afraid of suffering. But I'm not afraid of ghosts. And I think people suffer too easily,” she added.

      “I don't believe you do,” said Ralph, looking at her with his hands in his pockets.

      “I don't think that's a fault,” she answered. “It's not absolutely necessary to suffer; we were not made for that.”

      “You were not, certainly.”

      “I'm not speaking of myself.” And she wandered off a little.

      “No, it isn't a fault,” said her cousin. “It's a merit to be strong.”

      “Only, if you don't suffer they call you hard,” Isabel remarked.

      They passed out of the smaller drawing-room, into which they had returned from the gallery, and paused in the hall, at the foot of the staircase. Here Ralph presented his companion with her bedroom candle, which he had taken from a niche. “Never mind what they call you. When you do suffer they call you an idiot. The great point's to be as happy as possible.”

      She looked at him a little; she had taken her candle and placed her foot on the oaken stair. “Well,” she said, “that's what I came to Europe for, to be as happy as possible. Good-night.”

      “Good-night! I wish you all success, and shall be very glad to contribute to it!”

      She turned away, and he watched her as she slowly ascended. Then, with his hands always in his pockets, he went back to the empty drawing-room.

      Chapter VI

      Isabel Archer was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar. It is true that among her contemporaries she passed for a young woman of extraordinary profundity; for these excellent people never withheld their admiration from a reach of intellect of which they themselves were not conscious, and spoke of Isabel as a prodigy of learning, a creature reported to have read the classic authors – in translations. Her paternal aunt, Mrs. Varian, once spread the rumour that Isabel was writing

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