Page 306 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

knowledge of Paris. He had explained everything, shown
her everything, been her constant guide and interpreter.
They had breakfasted together, dined together, gone to the
theatre together, supped together, really in a manner quite
lived together. He was a true friend, Henrietta more than
once assured our heroine; and she had never supposed that
she could like any Englishman so well. Isabel could not have
told you why, but she found something that ministered to
mirth in the alliance the correspondent of the Interviewer
had struck with Lady Pensil’s brother; her amusement more-
over subsisted in face of the fact that she thought it a credit
to each of them. Isabel couldn’t rid herself of a suspicion
that they were playing somehow at cross-purposes—that
the simplicity of each had been entrapped. But this sim-
plicity was on either side none the less honourable. It was
as graceful on Henrietta’s part to believe that Mr. Bantling
took an interest in the diffusion of lively journalism and in
consolidating the position of lady-correspondents as it was
on the part of his companion to suppose that the cause of
the Interviewer—a periodical of which he never formed a
very definite conception—was, if subtly analyzed (a task to
which Mr. Bantling felt himself quite equal), but the cause
of Miss Stackpole’s need of demonstrative affection. Each of
these groping celibates supplied at any rate a want of which
the other was impatiently conscious. Mr. Bantling, who was
of rather a slow and a discursive habit, relished a prompt,
keen, positive woman, who charmed him by the influence
of a shining, challenging eye and a kind of bandbox fresh-
ness, and who kindled a perception of raciness in a mind

306 The Portrait of a Lady