Page 191 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

Chapter 15

It had been arranged that the two young ladies should pro-
ceed to London under Ralph’s escort, though Mrs. Touchett
looked with little favour on the plan. It was just the sort of
plan, she said, that Miss Stackpole would be sure to suggest,
and she enquired if the correspondent of the Interviewer
was to take the party to stay at a boarding-house.
‘I don’t care where she takes us to stay, so long as there’s
local colour,’ said Isabel. ‘That’s what we’re going to Lon-
don for.’
‘I suppose that after a girl has refused an English lord she
may do anything,’ her aunt rejoined. ‘After that one needn’t
stand on trifles.’
‘Should you have liked me to marry Lord Warburton?’
Isabel enquired.
‘Of course I should.’
‘I thought you disliked the English so much.’
‘So I do; but it’s all the greater reason for making use of
them.’
‘Is that your idea of marriage?’ And Isabel ventured to
add that her aunt appeared to her to have made very little
use of Mr. Touchett.
‘Your uncle’s not an English nobleman,’ said Mrs.
Touchett, ‘though even if he had been I should still prob-
ably have taken up my residence in Florence.’

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