Page 172 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

added, ‘that I’ve never heard her mention his name?’
Henrietta gave a brilliant smile. ‘I’m delighted to hear
that; it proves how much she thinks of him.’
Ralph appeared to allow that there was a good deal in
this, and he surrendered to thought while his companion
watched him askance. ‘If I should invite Mr. Goodwood,’ he
finally said, ‘it would be to quarrel with him.’
‘Don’t do that; he’d prove the better man.’
‘You certainly are doing your best to make me hate him!
I really don’t think I can ask him. I should be afraid of be-
ing rude to, him.’
‘It’s just as you please,’ Henrietta returned. ‘I had no idea
you were in love with her yourself.’
‘Do you really believe that?’ the young man asked with
lifted eyebrows.
‘That’s the most natural speech I’ve ever heard you make!
Of course I believe it,’ Miss Stackpole ingeniously said.
‘Well,’ Ralph concluded, ‘to prove to you that you’re
wrong I’ll invite him. It must be of course as a friend of
yours.’
‘It will not be as a friend of mine that he’ll come; and
it will not be to prove to me that I’m wrong that you’ll ask
him—but to prove it to yourself!’
These last words of Miss Stackpole’s (on which the two
presently separated) contained an amount of truth which
Ralph Touchett was obliged to recognize; but it so far took
the edge from too sharp a recognition that, in spite of his
suspecting it would be rather more indiscreet to keep than
to break his promise, he wrote Mr. Goodwood a note of six

172 The Portrait of a Lady