Page 158 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

‘You needn’t pretend you don’t.’
‘I like him extremely; I’m very free to admit that. But I
don’t wish to marry any one just now.’
‘You think some one may come along whom you may
like better. Well, that’s very likely,’ said Mr. Touchett, who
appeared to wish to show his kindness to the girl by easing
off her decision, as it were, and finding cheerful reasons for
it.
‘I don’t care if I don’t meet any one else. I like Lord War-
burton quite well enough.’ She fell into that appearance of a
sudden change of point of view with which she sometimes
startled and even displeased her interlocutors.
Her uncle, however, seemed proof against either of these
impressions. ‘He’s a very fine man,’ he resumed in a tone
which might have passed for that of encouragement. ‘His
letter was one of the pleasantest I’ve received for some
weeks. I suppose one of the reasons I like it was that it was
all about you; that is all except the part that was about him-
self. I suppose he told you all that.’
‘He would have told me everything I wished to ask him,’
Isabel said.
‘But you didn’t feel curious?’
‘My curiosity would have been idle—once I had deter-
mined to decline his offer.’
‘You didn’t find it sufficiently attractive?’ Mr. Touchett
enquired.
She was silent a little. ‘I suppose it was that,’ she presently
admitted. ‘But I don’t know why.’
‘Fortunately ladies are not obliged to give reasons,’ said

158 The Portrait of a Lady