Page 115 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

Isabel judged best not to show this letter to her uncle;
but she acquainted him with its purport, and, as she expect-
ed, he begged her instantly to assure Miss Stackpole, in his
name, that he should be delighted to receive her at Garden-
court. ‘Though she’s a literary lady,’ he said, ‘I suppose that,
being an American, she won’t show me up, as that other one
did. She has seen others like me.’
‘She has seen no other so delightful!’ Isabel answered;
but she was not altogether at ease about Henrietta’s repro-
ductive instincts, which belonged to that side of her friend’s
character which she regarded with least complacency. She
wrote to Miss Stackpole, however, that she would be very
welcome under Mr. Touchett’s roof; and this alert young
woman lost no time in announcing her prompt approach.
She had gone up to London, and it was from that centre that
she took the train for the station nearest to Gardencourt,
where Isabel and Ralph were in waiting to receive her.
‘Shall I love her or shall I hate her?’ Ralph asked while
they moved along the platform.
‘Whichever you do will matter very little to her,’ said Isa-
bel. ‘She doesn’t care a straw what men think of her.’
‘As a man I’m bound to dislike her then. She must be a
kind of monster. Is she very ugly?’
‘No, she’s decidedly pretty.’
‘A female interviewer—a reporter in petticoats? I’m very
curious to see her,’ Ralph conceded.
‘It’s very easy to laugh at her but it is not easy to be as
brave as she.’
‘I should think not; crimes of violence and attacks on the

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