Page 62 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

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 dis-
appointed if you count on that. It’s a dismally prosaic one;

62 The Portrait of a Lady