Page 820 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather
had changed to fair; the day, one of the last of the treacher-
ous May-time, was warm and windless, and the air had the
brightness of the hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad
to think of poor Touchett, it was not too sad, since death,
for him, had had no violence. He had been dying so long;
he was so ready; everything had been so expected and pre-
pared. There were tears in Isabel’s eyes, but they were not
tears that blinded. She looked through them at the beauty
of the day, the splendour of nature, the sweetness of the old
English churchyard, the bowed heads of good friends. Lord
Warburton was there, and a group of gentlemen all un-
known to her, several of whom, as she afterwards learned,
were connected with the bank; and there were others whom
she knew. Miss Stackpole was among the first, with honest
Mr. Bantling beside her; and Caspar Goodwood, lifting his
head higher than the rest-bowing it rather less.
During much of the time Isabel was conscious of Mr.
Goodwood’s gaze; he looked at her somewhat harder than
he usually looked in public, while the others had fixed their
eyes upon the churchyard turf. But she never let him see
that she saw him; she thought of him only to wonder that
he was still in England. She found she had taken for grant-
ed that after accompanying Ralph to Gardencourt he had
gone away; she remembered how little it was a country that
pleased him. He was there, however, very distinctly there;
and something in his attitude seemed to say that he was
there with a complex intention. She wouldn’t meet his eyes,
though there was doubtless sympathy in them; he made

820 The Portrait of a Lady