Page 83 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

He drew a caricature of her in which she was represented as
a very pretty young woman dressed, on the lines of the pre-
vailing fashion, in the folds of the national banner. Isabel’s
chief dread in life at this period of her development was that
she should appear narrow-minded; what she feared next
afterwards was that she should really be so. But she never-
theless made no scruple of abounding in her cousin’s sense
and pretending to sigh for the charms of her native land.
She would be as American as it pleased him to regard her,
and if he chose to laugh at her she would give him plenty of
occupation. She defended England against his mother, but
when Ralph sang its praises on purpose, as she said, to work
her up, she found herself able to differ from him on a vari-
ety of points. In fact, the quality of this small ripe country
seemed as sweet to her as the taste of an October pear; and
her satisfaction was at the root of the good spirits which en-
abled her to take her cousin’s chaff and return it in kind. If
her good-humour flagged at moments it was not because
she thought herself ill-used, but because she suddenly felt
sorry for Ralph. It seemed to her he was talking as a blind
and had little heart in what he said.
‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you,’ she observed
to him once; ‘but I suspect you’re a great humbug.’
‘That’s your privilege,’ Ralph answered, who had not
been used to being so crudely addressed.
‘I don’t know what you care for; I don’t think you care
for anything. You don’t really care for England when you
praise it; you don’t care for America even when you pretend
to abuse it.’

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