Page 164 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

ful person, and she supposed that this was why he left her
so harshly critical. When, however, Lord Warburton, who
not only did correspond with it, but gave an extension to
the term, appealed to her approval, she found herself still
unsatisfied. It was certainly strange.
The sense of her incoherence was not a help to answer-
ing Mr. Goodwood’s letter, and Isabel determined to leave
it a while unhonoured. If he had determined to persecute
her he must take the consequences; foremost among which
was his being left to perceive how little it charmed her that
he should come down to Gardencourt. She was already li-
able to the incursions of one suitor at this place, and though
it might be pleasant to be appreciated in opposite quar-
ters there was a kind of grossness in entertaining two such
passionate pleaders at once, even in a case where the enter-
tainment should consist of dismissing them. She made no
reply to Mr. Goodwood; but at the end of three days she
wrote to Lord Warburton, and the letter belongs to our his-
tory.
DEAR LORD WARBURTON—A great deal of earnest
thought has not led me to change my mind about the sug-
gestion you were so kind as to make me the other day. I am
not, I am really and truly not, able to regard you in the light
of a companion for life; or to think of your home—your var-
ious homes—as settled seat of my existence. These things
cannot be reasoned about, and I very earnestly entreat you
not to return to the subject we discussed so exhaustively. We
see our lives from our own point of view; that is the privi-
lege of the weakest and humblest of us; and I shall never be

164 The Portrait of a Lady