Page 141 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

Chapter 12

She put the letter into her pocket and offered her visitor a
smile of welcome, exhibiting no trace of discomposure and
half surprised at her coolness.
‘They told me you were out here,’ said Lord Warburton;
‘and as there was no one in the drawing-room and it’s really
you that I wish to see, I came out with no more ado.’
Isabel had got up; she felt a wish, for the moment, that he
should not sit down beside her. ‘I was just going indoors.’
‘Please don’t do that; it’s much jollier here; I’ve ridden
over from Lockleigh; it’s a lovely day.’ His smile was pecu-
liarly friendly and pleasing, and his whole person seemed
to emit that radiance of good-feeling and good fare which
had formed the charm of the girl’s first impression of him. It
surrounded him like a zone of fine June weather.
‘We’ll walk about a little then,’ said Isabel, who could not
divest herself of the sense of an intention on the part of her
visitor and who wished both to elude the intention and to
satisfy her curiosity about it. It had flashed upon her vision
once before, and it had given her on that occasion, as we
know, a certain alarm. This alarm was composed of several
elements, not all of which were disagreeable; she had indeed
spent some days in analyzing them and had succeeded in
separating the pleasant part of the idea of Lord Warburton’s
‘making up’ to her from the painful. It may appear to some

141