Page 463 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

He threw up his head as if calculating. ‘Seventeen days
ago.’
‘You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow
trains.’
‘I came as fast as I could. I’d have come five days ago if I
had been able.’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood,’
she coldly smiled.
‘Not to you—no. But to me.’
‘You gain nothing that I see.’
‘That’s for me to judge!’
‘Of course. To me it seems that you only torment your-
self.’ And then, to change the subject, she asked him if he
had seen Henrietta Stackpole. He looked as if he had not
come from Boston to Florence to talk of Henrietta Stack-
pole; but he answered, distinctly enough, that this young
lady had been with him just before he left America. ‘She
came to see you?’ Isabel then demanded.
‘Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was
the day I had got your letter.’
‘Did you tell her?’ Isabel asked with a certain anxiety.
‘Oh no,’ said Caspar Goodwood simply; ‘I didn’t want
to do that.
She’ll hear it quick enough; she hears everything.’
‘I shall write to her, and then she’ll write to me and scold
me,’ Isabel declared, trying to smile again.
Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. ‘I guess she’ll
come right out,’ he said.
‘On purpose to scold me?’

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