Page 694 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

was unhappy, though indeed her ingenuity was unable to
suggest what comfort he hoped to give her by coming to
Rome and yet not calling on her. They met him twice in the
street, but he had no appearance of seeing them; they were
driving, and he had a habit of looking straight in front of
him, as if he proposed to take in but one object at a time.
Isabel could have fancied she had seen him the day before;
it must have been with just that face and step that he had
walked out of Mrs. Touchett’s door at the close of their last
interview. He was dressed just as he had been dressed on
that day, Isabel remembered the colour of his cravat; and
yet in spite of this familiar look there was a strangeness in
his figure too, something that made her feel it afresh to be
rather terrible he should have come to Rome. He looked big-
ger and more overtopping than of old, and in those days he
certainly reached high enough. She noticed that the people
whom he passed looked back after him; but he went straight
forward, lifting above them a face like a February sky.
Miss Stackpole’s other topic was very different; she gave
Isabel the latest news about Mr. Bantling. He had been out
in the United States the year before, and she was happy
to say she had been able to show him considerable atten-
tion. She didn’t know how much he had enjoyed it, but she
would undertake to say it had done him good; he wasn’t the
same man when he left as he had been when he came. It
had opened his eyes and shown him that England wasn’t ev-
erything. He had been very much liked in most places, and
thought extremely simple-more simple than the English
were commonly supposed to be. There were people who had

694 The Portrait of a Lady