Page 450 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

Chapter 31

Isabel came back to Florence, but only after several
months; an interval sufficiently replete with incident. It is
not, however, during this interval that we are closely con-
cerned with her; our attention is engaged again on a certain
day in the late spring-time, shortly after her return to Palaz-
zo Crescentini and a year from the date of the incidents
just narrated. She was alone on this occasion, in one of the
smaller of the numerous rooms devoted by Mrs. Touchett
to social uses, and there was that in her expression and at-
titude which would have suggested that she was expecting
a visitor. The tall window was open, and though its green
shutters were partly drawn the bright air of the garden had
come in through a broad interstice and filled the room with
warmth and perfume. Our young woman stood near it for
some time, her hands clasped behind her; she gazed abroad
with the vagueness of unrest. Too troubled for attention she
moved in a vain circle. Yet it could not be in her thought to
catch a glimpse of her visitor before he should pass into the
house, since the entrance to the palace was not through the
garden, in which stillness and privacy always reigned. She
wished rather to forestall his arrival by a process of conjec-
ture, and to judge by the expression of her face this attempt
gave her plenty to do. Grave she found herself, and positively
more weighted, as by the experience of the lapse of the year

450 The Portrait of a Lady