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‘It’s very kind of you to say so; but, even if I gain, stern
justice is not what I most love. Is Mrs. Touchett going to
take you abroad?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Is England not good enough for you?’
‘That’s a very Machiavellian speech; it doesn’t deserve an
answer. I want to see as many countries as I can.’
‘Then you’ll go on judging, I suppose.’
‘Enjoying, I hope, too.’
‘Yes, that’s what you enjoy most; I can’t make out what
you’re up to,’ said Lord Warburton. ‘You strike me as having
mysterious purposes—vast designs.’
‘You’re so good as to have a theory about me which I
don’t at all fill out. Is there anything mysterious in a pur-
pose entertained and executed every year, in the most public
manner, by fifty thousand of my fellow-countrymen—the
purpose of improving one’s mind by foreign travel?’
‘You can’t improve your mind, Miss Archer,’ her com-
panion declared. ‘It’s already a most formidable instrument.
It looks down on us all; it despises us.’
‘Despises you? You’re making fun of me,’ said Isabel se-
riously.
‘Well, you think us ‘quaint’—that’s the same thing. I
won’t be thought ‘quaint,’ to begin with; I’m not so in the
least. I protest.’
‘That protest is one of the quaintest things I’ve ever
heard,’ Isabel answered with a smile.
Lord Warburton was briefly silent. ‘You judge only from
the outsideyou don’t care,’ he said presently. ‘You only care

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