Page 80 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

Chapter 7

The two amused themselves, time and again, with talking
of the attitude of the British public as if the young lady had
been in a position to appeal to it; but in fact the British pub-
lic remained for the present profoundly indifferent to Miss
Isabel Archer, whose fortune had dropped her, as her cous-
in said, into the dullest house in England. Her gouty uncle
received very little company, and Mrs. Touchett, not hav-
ing cultivated relations with her husband’s neighbours, was
not warranted in expecting visits from them. She had, how-
ever, a peculiar taste; she liked to receive cards. For what
is usually called social intercourse she had very little rel-
ish; but nothing pleased her more than to find her hall-table
whitened with oblong morsels of symbolic pasteboard. She
flattered herself that she was a very just woman, and had
mastered the sovereign truth that nothing in this world is
got for nothing. She had played no social part as mistress of
Gardencourt, and it was not to be supposed that, in the sur-
rounding country, a minute account should be kept of her
comings and goings. But it is by no means certain that she
did not feel it to be wrong that so little notice was taken of
them and that her failure (really very gratuitous) to make
herself important in the neighbourhood had, not much to
do with the acrimony of her allusions to her husband’s ad-
opted country. Isabel presently found herself in the singular

80 The Portrait of a Lady