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Chapter 11

He took a resolve after this not to misinterpret her words
even when Miss Stackpole appeared to strike the person-
al note most strongly. He bethought himself that persons,
in her view, were simple and homogeneous organisms, and
that he, for his own part, was too perverted a representative
of the nature of man to have a right to deal with her in strict
reciprocity. He carried out his resolve with a great deal of
tact, and the young lady found in renewed contact with him
no obstacle to the exercise of her genius for unshrinking
enquiry, the general application of her confidence. Her situ-
ation at Gardencourt therefore, appreciated as we have seen
her to be by Isabel and full of appreciation herself of that
free play of intelligence which, to her sense, rendered Isa-
bel’s character a sister-spirit, and of the easy venerableness
of Mr. Touchett, whose noble tone, as she said, met with
her full approval—her situation at Gardencourt would have
been perfectly comfortable had she not conceived an irre-
sistible mistrust of the little lady for whom she had at first
supposed herself obliged to ‘allow’ as mistress of the house.
She presently discovered, in truth, that this obligation was
of the lightest and that Mrs. Touchett cared very little how
Miss Stackpole behaved. Mrs. Touchett had defined her to
Isabel as both an adventuress and a bore—adventuresses
usually giving one more of a thrill; she had expressed some

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