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tive. Of course she herself looked at the matter as a person
whose present happiness had nothing to grudge to Henriet-
ta’s violated conscience. Osmond had thought their alliance
a kind of monstrosity; he couldn’t imagine what they had
in common. For him, Mr. Bantling’s fellow tourist was sim-
ply the most vulgar of women, and he had also pronounced
her the most abandoned. Against this latter clause of the
verdict Isabel had appealed with an ardour that had made
him wonder afresh at the oddity of some of his wife’s tastes.
Isabel could explain it only by saying that she liked to know
people who were as different as possible from herself. ‘Why
then don’t you make the acquaintance of your washerwom-
an?’ Osmond had enquired; to which Isabel had answered
that she was afraid her washerwoman wouldn’t care for her.
Now Henrietta cared so much.
Ralph had seen nothing of her for the greater part of
the two years that had followed her marriage; the winter
that formed the beginning of her residence in Rome he had
spent again at San Remo, where he had been joined in the
spring by his mother, who afterwards had gone with him to
England, to see what they were doing at the bank-an opera-
tion she couldn’t induce him to perform. Ralph had taken
a lease of his house at San Remo, a small villa which he had
occupied still another winter; but late in the month of April
of this second year he had come down to Rome. It was the
first time since her marriage that he had stood face to face
with Isabel; his desire to see her again was then of the keen-
est. She had written to him from time to time, but her letters
told him nothing he wanted to know. He had asked his

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