the house. When there was another interval no one moved. Mr. Osmond talked to Isabel, and Lord Warburton kept his corner. He did so but for a short time, however; after which he got up and bade good-night to the ladies. Isabel said nothing to detain him, but it didn’t prevent his being puzzled again. Why should she mark so one of his values — quite the wrong one — when she would have nothing to do with another, which was quite the right? He was angry with himself for being puzzled, and then angry for being angry. Verdi’s music did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre and walked homeward, without knowing his way, through the tortuous, tragic streets of Rome, where heavier sorrows than his had been carried under the stars.
“What’s the character of that gentleman?” Osmond asked of Isabel after he had retired.
“Irreproachable — don’t you see it?”
“He owns about half England; that’s his character,” Henrietta remarked. “That’s what they call a free country!”
“Ah, he’s a great proprietor? Happy man!” said Gilbert Osmond.
“Do you call that happiness — the ownership of wretched human beings?” cried Miss Stackpole. “He owns his tenants and has thousands of them. It’s pleasant to own something, but inanimate objects are enough for me. I don’t insist on flesh and blood and minds and consciences.”
“It seems to me you own a human being or two,” Mr. Bantling suggested jocosely. “I wonder if Warburton orders his tenants about as you do me.”
“Lord Warburton’s a great radical,” Isabel said. “He has very advanced opinions.”
“He has very advanced stone walls. His park’s enclosed by a gigantic iron fence, some thirty miles round,” Henrietta announced for the information of Mr. Osmond. “I should like him to converse with a few of our Boston radicals.”
“Don’t they approve of iron fences?” asked Mr. Bantling.
“Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were talking to YOU over something with a neat top-finish of broken glass.”
“Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?” Osmond went on, questioning Isabel.
“Well enough for all the use I have for him.”
“And how much of a use is that?”
“Well, I like to like him.”
“‘Liking to like’— why, it makes a passion!” said Osmond.
“No”— she considered —“keep that for liking to DISlike.”
“Do you wish to provoke me then,” Osmond laughed, “to a passion for HIM?”
She said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question with a disproportionate gravity. “No, Mr. Osmond; I don’t think I should ever dare to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate,” she more easily added, “is a very nice man.”
“Of great ability?” her friend enquired.
“Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks.”
“As good as he’s good-looking do you mean? He’s very good-looking. How detestably fortunate!— to be a great English magnate, to be clever and handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to enjoy your high favour! That’s a man I could envy.”
Isabel considered him with interest. “You seem to me to be always envying some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it’s poor Lord Warburton.”
“My envy’s not dangerous; it wouldn’t hurt a mouse. I don’t want to destroy the people — I only want to BE them. You see it would destroy only myself.”
“You’d like to be the Pope?” said Isabel.
“I should love it — but I should have gone in for it earlier. But why”— Osmond reverted —“do you speak of your friend as poor?”
“Women — when they are very, very good sometimes pity men after they’ve hurt them; that’s their great way of showing kindness,” said Ralph, joining in the conversation for the first time and with a cynicism so transparently ingenious as to be virtually innocent.
“Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?” Isabel asked, raising her eyebrows as if the idea were perfectly fresh.
“It serves him right if you have,” said Henrietta while the curtain rose for the ballet.
Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next twenty-four hours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she encountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he stood before the lion of the collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come in with her companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert Osmond had his place, and the party, having ascended the staircase, entered the first and finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her alertly enough, but said in a moment that he was leaving the gallery. “And I’m leaving Rome,” he added. “I must bid you goodbye.” Isabel, inconsequently enough, was now sorry to hear it. This was perhaps because she had ceased to be afraid of his renewing his suit; she was thinking of something else. She was on the point of naming her regret, but she checked herself and simply wished him a happy journey; which made him look at her rather unlightedly. “I’m afraid you’ll think me very ‘volatile.’ I told you the other day I wanted so much to stop.”
“Oh no; you could easily change your mind.”
“That’s what I have done.”
“Bon voyage then.”
“You’re in a great hurry to get rid of me,” said his lordship quite dismally.
“Not in the least. But I hate partings.”
“You don’t care what I do,” he went on pitifully.
Isabel looked at him a moment. “Ah,” she said, “you’re not keeping your promise!”
He coloured like a boy of fifteen. “If I’m not, then it’s because I can’t; and that’s why I’m going.”
“Good-bye then.”
“Good-bye.” He lingered still, however. “When shall I see you again?”
Isabel hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration: “Some day after you’re married.”
“That will never be. It will be after you are.”
“That will do as well,” she smiled.
“Yes, quite as well. Good-bye.”
They shook hands, and he left her alone in the glorious room, among the shining antique marbles. She sat down in the centre of the circle of these presences, regarding them vaguely, resting her eyes on their beautiful blank faces; listening, as it were, to their eternal silence. It is impossible, in Rome at least, to look long at a great company of Greek sculptures without feeling the effect of their noble quietude; which, as with a high door closed for the ceremony, slowly drops on the spirit the large white mantle of peace. I say in Rome especially, because the Roman air
