Page 701 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

stimulated of course by their inevitable difference of view-
Ralph having amused himself with taking the ground that
the genial ex-guardsman was a regular Machiavelli. Caspar
Goodwood could contribute nothing to such a debate; but
after he had been left alone with his host he found there were
various other matters they could take up. It must be admit-
ted that the lady who had just gone out was not one of these;
Caspar granted all Miss Stackpole’s merits in advance, but
had no further remark to make about her. Neither, after
the first allusions, did the two men expatiate upon Mrs.
Osmond-a theme in which Goodwood perceived as many
dangers as Ralph. He felt very sorry for that unclassable per-
sonage; he couldn’t bear to see a pleasant man, so pleasant
for all his queerness, so beyond anything to be done. There
was always something to be done, for Goodwood, and he
did it in this case by repeating several times his visit to the
Hotel de Paris. It seemed to Isabel that she had been very
clever; she had artfully disposed of the superfluous Cas-
par. She had given him an occupation; she had converted
him into a caretaker of Ralph. She had a plan of making
him travel northward with her cousin as soon as the first
mild weather should allow it. Lord Warburton had brought
Ralph to Rome and Mr. Goodwood should take him away.
There seemed a happy symmetry in this, and she was now
intensely eager that Ralph should depart. She had a con-
stant fear he would die there before her eyes and a horror
of the occurrence of this event at an inn, by her door, which
he had so rarely entered. Ralph must sink to his last rest in
his own dear house, in one of those deep, dim chambers of

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