Page 707 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

laugh: ‘Is that the story that Isabel tells? It isn’t bad, as such
things go. If he wishes to marry my niece, pray why doesn’t
he do it? Perhaps he has gone to buy the wedding-ring and
will come back with it next month, after I’m gone.’
‘No, he’ll not come back. Miss Osmond doesn’t wish to
marry him.’
‘She’s very accommodating! I knew she was fond of Isa-
bel, but I didn’t know she carried it so far.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Henrietta coldly, and re-
flecting that the Countess was unpleasantly perverse. ‘I
really must stick to my point-that Isabel never encouraged
the attentions of Lord Warburton.’
‘My dear friend, what do you and I know about it? All we
know is that my brother’s capable of everything.’
‘I don’t know what your brother’s capable of,’ said Hen-
rietta with dignity.
‘It’s not her encouraging Warburton that I complain of;
it’s her sending him away. I want particularly to see him. Do
you suppose she thought I would make him faithless?’ the
Countess continued with audacious insistence. ‘However,
she’s only keeping him, one can feel that. The house is full
of him there; he’s quite in the air. Oh yes, he has left traces;
I’m sure I shall see him yet.’
‘Well,’ said Henrietta after a little, with one of those in-
spirations which had made the fortune of her letters to the
Interviewer, ‘perhaps he’ll be more successful with you than
with Isabel!’
When she told her friend of the offer she had made Ralph
Isabel replied that she could have done nothing that would

707