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lifetime has abstained without effort from making himself
disagreeable to his friends, that when the need comes for
such a course it is not discredited by irritating associations.
‘I hope you had a pleasant ride,’ said Isabel, who observed
her companion’s hesitancy.
‘It would have been pleasant if for nothing else than that
it brought me here.’
‘Are you so fond of Gardencourt?’ the girl asked, more
and more sure that he meant to make some appeal to her;
wishing not to challenge him if he hesitated, and yet to keep
all the quietness of her reason if he proceeded. It suddenly
came upon her that her situation was one which a few weeks
ago she would have deemed deeply romantic: the park of an
old English country-house, with the foreground embellished
by a ‘great’ (as she supposed) nobleman in the act of mak-
ing love to a young lady who, on careful inspection, should
be found to present remarkable analogies with herself. But
if she was now the heroine of the situation she succeeded
scarcely the less in looking at it from the outside.
‘I care nothing for Gardencourt,’ said her companion. ‘I
care only for you.
‘You’ve known me too short a time to have a right to say
that, and I can’t believe you’re serious.’
These words of Isabel’s were not perfectly sincere, for she
had no doubt whatever that he himself was. They were sim-
ply a tribute to the fact, of which she was perfectly aware,
that those he had just uttered would have excited surprise
on the part of a vulgar world. And, moreover, if anything
beside the sense she had already acquired that Lord War-

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