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should see how that pleases him. Whenever I say so he al-
ways breaks out with the same exclamation—‘Ah, but really,
come now!’’ A few days later she wrote that she had decided
to go to Paris at the end of the week and that Mr. Bantling
had promised to see her off perhaps even would go as far as
Dover with her. She would wait in Paris till Isabel should
arrive, Henrietta added; speaking quite as if Isabel were to
start on her continental journey alone and making no allu-
sion to Mrs. Touchett. Bearing in mind his interest in their
late companion, our heroine communicated several passag-
es from this correspondence to Ralph, who followed with an
emotion akin to suspense the career of the representative of
the Interviewer.
‘It seems to me she’s doing very well,’ he said, ‘going over
to Paris with an ex-Lancer! If she wants something to write
about she has only to describe that episode.’
‘It’s not conventional, certainly,’ Isabel answered; ‘but if
you mean that—as far as Henrietta is concerned—it’s not
perfectly innocent, you’re very much mistaken. You’ll never
understand Henrietta.’
‘Pardon me, I understand her perfectly. I didn’t at all at
first, but now I’ve the point of view. I’m afraid, however, that
Bantling hasn’t; he may have some surprises. Oh, I under-
stand Henrietta as well as if I had made her!’
Isabel was by no means sure of this, but she abstained
from expressing further doubt, for she was disposed in these
days to extend a great charity to her cousin. One afternoon
less than a week after Madame Merle’s departure she was
seated in the library with a volume to which her attention

288 The Portrait of a Lady