Page 192 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

‘Do you think Lord Warburton could make me any bet-
ter than I am?’ the girl asked with some animation. ‘I don’t
mean I’m too good to improve. I mean—I mean that I don’t
love Lord Warburton enough to marry him.’
‘You did right to refuse him then,’ said Mrs. Touchett in
her smallest, sparest voice. ‘Only, the next great offer you
get, I hope you’ll manage to come up to your standard.’
‘We had better wait till the offer comes before we talk
about it. I hope very much I may have no more offers for the
present. They upset me completely.’
‘You probably won’t be troubled with them if you adopt
permanently the Bohemian manner of life. However, I’ve
promised Ralph not to criticize.’
‘I’ll do whatever Ralph says is right,’ Isabel returned. ‘I’ve
unbounded confidence in Ralph.’
‘His mother’s much obliged to you!’ this lady dryly
laughed.
‘It seems to me indeed she ought to feel it!’ Isabel irre-
pressibly answered.
Ralph had assured her that there would be no viola-
tion of decency in their paying a visit—the little party of
three—to the sights of the metropolis; but Mrs. Touchett
took a different view. Like many ladies of her country who
had lived a long time in Europe, she had completely lost her
native tact on such points, and in her reaction, not in itself
deplorable, against the liberty allowed to young persons be-
yond the seas, had fallen into gratuitous and exaggerated
scruples. Ralph accompanied their visitors to town and es-
tablished them at a quiet inn in a street that ran at right

192 The Portrait of a Lady