Page 456 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

Touchett to apologize for not presenting herself just yet in
Florence, and her aunt replied characteristically enough.
Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated, were of no more use to
her than bubbles, and she herself never dealt in such articles.
One either did the thing or one didn’t, and what one ‘would’
have done belonged to the sphere of the irrelevant, like the
idea of a future life or of the origin of things. Her letter was
frank, but (a rare case with Mrs. Touchett) not so frank as
it pretended. She easily forgave her niece for not stopping
at Florence, because she took it for a sign that Gilbert Os-
mond was less in question there than formerly. She watched
of course to see if he would now find a pretext for going to
Rome, and derived some comfort from learning that he had
not been guilty of an absence.
Isabel, on her side, had not been a fortnight in Rome be-
fore she proposed to Madame Merle that they should make
a little pilgrimage to the East. Madame Merle remarked that
her friend was restless, but she added that she herself had
always been consumed with the desire to visit Athens and
Constantinople. The two ladies accordingly embarked on
this expedition, and spent three months in Greece, in Tur-
key, in Egypt. Isabel found much to interest her in these
countries, though Madame Merle continued to remark that
even among the most classic sites, the scenes most calcu-
lated to suggest repose and reflexion, a certain incoherence
prevailed in her. Isabel travelled rapidly and recklessly; she
was like a thirsty person draining cup after cup. Madame
Merle meanwhile, as lady-in-waiting to a princess circulat-
ing incognita, panted a little in her rear. It was on Isabel’s

456 The Portrait of a Lady