Page 542 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

‘I was glad to think of him between those thick walls at
Gardencourt.’
‘He was completely alone there; the thick walls were his
only company.’
‘You went to see him; you’ve been extremely kind.’
‘Oh dear, I had nothing to do,’ said Lord Warburton.
‘We hear, on the contrary, that you’re doing great things.
Every one speaks of you as a great statesman, and I’m per-
petually seeing your name in the Times, which, by the way,
doesn’t appear to hold it in reverence. You’re apparently as
wild a radical as ever.’
‘I don’t feel nearly so wild; you know the world has come
round to me. Touchett and I have kept up a sort of parlia-
mentary debate all the way from London. I tell him he’s the
last of the Tories, and he calls me the King of the Goths-says
I have, down to the details of my personal appearance, ev-
ery sign of the brute. So you see there’s life in him yet.’
Isabel had many questions to ask about Ralph, but she
abstained from asking them all. She would see for herself on
the morrow. She perceived that after a little Lord Warbur-
ton would tire of that subject-he had a conception of other
possible topics. She was more and more able to say to herself
that he had recovered, and, what is more to the point, she
was able to say it without bitterness. He had been for her, of
old, such an image of urgency, of insistence, of something
to be resisted and reasoned with, that his reappearance at
first menaced her with a new trouble. But she was now re-
assured; she could see he only wished to live with her on
good terms, that she was to understand he had forgiven her

542 The Portrait of a Lady