Page 754 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

Chapter 51

The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity
of her tenure of her brother’s hospitality. A week after this
incident Isabel received a telegram from England, dated
from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp of Mrs. Touchett’s
authorship. ‘Ralph cannot last many days,’ it ran, ‘and if
convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you
must come only if you’ve not other duties. Say, for myself,
that you used to talk a good deal about your duty and to
wonder what it was; shall be curious to see whether you’ve
found it out. Ralph is really dying, and there’s no other com-
pany.’ Isabel was prepared for this news, having received
from Henrietta Stackpole a detailed account of her journey
to England with her appreciative patient. Ralph had arrived
more dead than alive, but she had managed to convey him to
Gardencourt, where he had taken to his bed, which, as Miss
Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leave again. She
added that she had really had two patients on her hands in-
stead of one, inasmuch as Mr. Goodwood, who had been of
no earthly use, was quite as ailing, in a different way, as Mr.
Touchett. Afterwards she wrote that she had been obliged to
surrender the field to Mrs. Touchett, who had just returned
from America and had promptly given her to understand
that she didn’t wish any interviewing at Gardencourt. Isabel
had written to her aunt shortly after Ralph came to Rome,

754 The Portrait of a Lady