Page 454 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

happened very often it sometimes appeared to Mrs. Ludlow
that she had lost her courage. So uncanny a result of so ex-
hilarating an incident as inheriting a fortune was of course
perplexing to the cheerful Lily; it added to her general sense
that Isabel was not at all like other people.
Our young lady’s courage, however, might have been tak-
en as reaching its height after her relations had gone home.
She could imagine braver things than spending the win-
ter in Paris—Paris had sides by which it so resembled New
York, Paris was like smart, neat prose—and her close corre-
spondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such
flights. She had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the
absolute boldness and wantonness of liberty, than when she
turned away from the platform at the Euston Station on one
of the last days of November, after the departure of the train
that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her children
to their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for her to regale;
she was very conscious of that; she was very observant, as we
know, of what was good for her, and her effort was constant-
ly to find something that was good enough. To profit by the
present advantage till the latest moment she had made the
journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers. She would
have accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund
Ludlow had asked her, as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily
so fidgety and she asked such impossible questions. Isabel
watched the train move away; she kissed her hand to the el-
der of her small nephews, a demonstrative child who leaned
dangerously far out of the window of the carriage and made
separation an occasion of violent hilarity, and then she

454 The Portrait of a Lady