Page 398 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

not needed it to feel exempt from anxiety. On the whole she
was not afraid of the Countess, and she could afford to do
what was altogether best—not to appear so.
Isabel had meanwhile another visitor, whom it was not,
even behind her back, so easy a matter to patronize. Hen-
rietta Stackpole, who had left Paris after Mrs. Touchett’s
departure for San Remo and had worked her way down,
as she said, through the cities of North Italy, reached the
banks of the Arno about the middle of May. Madame Merle
surveyed her with a single glance, took her in from head
to foot, and after a pang of despair determined to endure
her. She determined indeed to delight in her. She mightn’t
be inhaled as a rose, but she might be grasped as a nettle.
Madame Merle genially squeezed her into insignificance,
and Isabel felt that in foreseeing this liberality she had done
justice to her friend’s intelligence. Henrietta’s arrival had
been announced by Mr. Bantling, who, coming down from
Nice while she was at Venice, and expecting to find her in
Florence, which she had not yet reached, called at Palazzo
Crescentini to express his disappointment. Henrietta’s own
advent occurred two days later and produced in Mr. Bant-
ling an emotion amply accounted for by the fact that he had
not seen her since the termination of the episode at Ver-
sailles. The humorous view of his situation was generally
taken, but it was uttered only by Ralph Touchett, who, in
the privacy of his own apartment, when Bantling smoked a
cigar there, indulged in goodness knew what strong comedy
on the subject of the all-judging one and her British back-
er. This gentleman took the joke in perfectly good part and

398 The Portrait of a Lady