Page 41 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

in hersympathize with her. She’s evidently just the sort of
person to appreciate her. She has lived so much in foreign
society; she told Isabel all about it. You know you’ve always
thought Isabel rather foreign.’
‘You want her to give her a little foreign sympathy, eh?
Don’t you think she gets enough at home?’
‘Well, she ought to go abroad,’ said Mrs. Ludlow. ‘She’s
just the person to go abroad.’
‘And you want the old lady to take her, is that it?’
‘She has offered to take her—she’s dying to have Isabel
go. But what I want her to do when she gets her there is to
give her all the advantages. I’m sure all we’ve got to do,’ said
Mrs. Ludlow, ‘is to give her a chance.’
‘A chance for what?’
‘A chance to develop.’
‘Oh, Moses!’ Edmund Ludlow exclaimed. ‘I hope she
isn’t going to develop any more!’
‘If I were not sure you only said that for argument I
should feel very badly,’ his wife replied. ‘But you know you
love her.’
‘Do you know I love you?’ the young man said, jocosely,
to Isabel a little later, while he brushed his hat.
‘I’m sure I don’t care whether you do or not!’ exclaimed
the girl; whose voice and smile, however, were less haughty
than her words.
‘Oh, she feels so grand since Mrs. Touchett’s visit,’ said
her sister.
But Isabel challenged this assertion with a good deal of
seriousness. ‘You must not say that, Lily. I don’t feel grand

41