Page 791 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

Chapter 53

It was not with surprise, it was with a feeling which in
other circumstances would have had much of the effect of
joy, that as Isabel descended from the Paris Mail at Char-
ing Cross she stepped into the arms, as it were-or at any
rate into the hands-of Henrietta Stackpole. She had tele-
graphed to her friend from Turin, and though she had not
definitely said to herself that Henrietta would meet her, she
had felt her telegram would produce some helpful result.
On her long journey from Rome her mind had been given
up to vagueness; she was unable to question the future. She
performed this journey with sightless eyes and took little
pleasure in the countries she traversed, decked out though
they were in the richest freshness of spring. Her thoughts
followed their course through other countries-strange-
looking, dimly-lighted, pathless lands, in which there was
no change of seasons, but only, as it seemed, a perpetual
dreariness of winter. She had plenty to think about; but it
was neither reflexion nor conscious purpose that filled her
mind. Disconnected visions passed through it, and sudden
gleams of memory, of expectation. The past and the future
came and went at their will, but she saw them only in fitful
images, which rose and fell by a logic of their own. It was ex-
traordinary the things she remembered. Now that she was
in the secret, now that she knew something that so much

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