Page 134 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

sons surrounding me in that menial position.’
‘I like them in that position better than in some others,’
proclaimed Mrs. Touchett with much meaning.
‘Should you like me better if I were your butler, dear?’ her
husband asked.
‘I don’t think I should: you wouldn’t at all have the
tenue.’
‘The companions of freemen—I like that, Miss Stack-
pole,’ said Ralph. ‘It’s a beautiful description.’
‘When I said freemen I didn’t mean you, sir!’
And this was the only reward that Ralph got for his com-
pliment. Miss Stackpole was baffled; she evidently thought
there was something treasonable in Mrs. Touchett’s appreci-
ation of a class which she privately judged to be a mysterious
survival of feudalism. It was perhaps because her mind was
oppressed with this image that she suffered some days to
elapse before she took occasion to say to Isabel: ‘My dear
friend, I wonder if you’re growing faithless.’
‘Faithless? Faithless to you, Henrietta?’
‘No, that would be a great pain; but it’s not that.’
‘Faithless to my country then?’
‘Ah, that I hope will never be. When I wrote to you from
Liverpool I said I had something particular to tell you.
You’ve never asked me what it is. Is it because you’ve sus-
pected?’
‘Suspected what? As a rule I don’t think I suspect,’ said
Isabel. ‘I remember now that phrase in your letter, but I con-
fess I had forgotten it. What have you to tell me?’
Henrietta looked disappointed, and her steady gaze

134 The Portrait of a Lady