Page 124 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

ejaculations of delight of which the visitors to Gardencourt
were so frequently lavish. This young lady indeed, to do
her justice, was but little addicted to the use of convention-
al terms; there was something earnest and inventive in her
tone, which at times, in its strained deliberation, suggested
a person of high culture speaking a foreign language. Ralph
Touchett subsequently learned that she had at one time of-
ficiated as art-critic to a journal of the other world; but she
appeared, in spite of this fact, to carry in her pocket none of
the small change of admiration. Suddenly, just after he had
called her attention to a charming Constable, she turned and
looked at him as if he himself had been a picture.
‘Do you always spend your time like this?’ she demand-
ed.
‘I seldom spend it so agreeably.’
‘Well, you know what I mean—without any regular oc-
cupation.’
‘Ah,’ said Ralph, ‘I’m the idlest man living.’
Miss Stackpole directed her gaze to the Constable again,
and Ralph bespoke her attention for a small Lancret hang-
ing near it, which represented a gentleman in a pink doublet
and hose and a ruff, leaning against the pedestal of the statue
of a nymph in a garden and playing the guitar to two ladies
seated on the grass. ‘That’s my ideal of a regular occupation,’
he said.
Miss Stackpole turned to him again, and, though her eyes
had rested upon the picture, he saw she had missed the sub-
ject. She was thinking of something much more serious. ‘I
don’t see how you can reconcile it to your conscience.’

124 The Portrait of a Lady