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presently proposed to Isabel, at all events, that they should
make an excursion to London together. ‘If I must tell the
truth,’ she observed, ‘I’m not seeing much at this place, and
I shouldn’t think you were either. I’ve not even seen that
aristocrat—what’s his name?—Lord Washburton. He seems
to let you severely alone.’
‘Lord Warburton’s coming to-morrow, I happen to
know,’ replied her friend, who had received a note from the
master of Lockleigh in answer to her own letter. ‘You’ll have
every opportunity of turning him inside out.’
‘Well, he may do for one letter, but what’s one letter when
you want to write fifty? I’ve described all the scenery in this
vicinity and raved about all the old women and donkeys.
You may say what you please, scenery doesn’t make a vital
letter. I must go back to London and get some impressions
of real life. I was there but three days before I came away,
and that’s hardly time to get in touch.’
As Isabel, on her journey from New York to Garden-
court, had seen even less of the British capital than this,
it appeared a happy suggestion of Henrietta’s that the two
should go thither on a visit of pleasure. The idea struck
Isabel as charming; she was curious of the thick detail of
London, which had always loomed large and rich to her.
They turned over their schemes together and indulged in
visions of romantic hours. They would stay at some pictur-
esque old inn—one of the inns described by Dickens—and
drive over the town in those delightful hansoms. Henrietta
was a literary woman, and the great advantage of being a
literary woman was that you could go everywhere and do

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