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preliminary hovering. It affected her moreover as a peaceful
interlude, as a hush of the drum and fife in a career which
she had little warrant as yet for regarding as agitated, but
which nevertheless she was constantly picturing to herself
by the light of her hopes, her fears, her fancies, her ambi-
tions, her predilections, and which reflected these subjective
accidents in a manner sufficiently dramatic. Madame Merle
had predicted to Mrs. Touchett that after their young friend
had put her hand into her pocket half a dozen times she
would be reconciled to the idea that it had been filled by a
munificent uncle; and the event justified, as it had so often
justified before, that lady’s perspicacity. Ralph Touchett had
praised his cousin for being morally inflammable, that is
for being quick to take a hint that was meant as good ad-
vice. His advice had perhaps helped the matter; she had at
any rate before leaving San Remo grown used to feeling
rich. The consciousness in question found a proper place
in rather a dense little group of ideas that she had about
herself, and often it was by no means the least agreeable. It
took perpetually for granted a thousand good intentions.
She lost herself in a maze of visions; the fine things to be
done by a rich, independent, generous girl who took a large
human view of occasions and obligations were sublime in
the mass. Her fortune therefore became to her mind a part
of her better self; it gave her importance, gave her even, to
her own imagination, a certain ideal beauty. What it did for
her in the imagination of others is another affair, and on
this point we must also touch in time. The visions I have
just spoken of were mixed with other debates. Isabel liked

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