resumed in a tone which might have passed
for that of encouragement. "His letter was one of the pleasantest I've
received for some weeks. I suppose one of the reasons I liked it was
that it was all about you; that is all except the part that was about
himself. I suppose he told you all that."

"He would have told me everything I wished to ask him," Isabel said.

"But you didn't feel curious?"

"My curiosity would have been idle--once I had determined to decline his
offer."

"You didn't find it sufficiently attractive?" Mr. Touchett enquired.

She was silent a little. "I suppose it was that," she presently
admitted. "But I don't know why."

"Fortunately ladies are not obliged to give reasons," said her uncle.
"There's a great deal that's attractive about such an idea; but I don't
see why the English should want to entice us away from our native land.
I know that we try to attract them over there, but that's because our
population is insufficient. Here, you know, they're rather crowded.
However, I presume there's room for charming young ladies everywhere."

"There seems to have been room here for you," said Isabel, whose eyes
had been wandering over the large pleasure-spaces of the park.

Mr. Touchett gave a shrewd, conscious smile. "There's room everywhere,
my dear, if you'll pay for it. I sometimes think I've paid too much for
this. Perhaps you also might have to pay too much."

"Perhaps I might," the girl replied.

That suggestion gave her something more definite to rest on than she
had found in her own thoughts, and the fact of this association of her
uncle's mild acuteness with her dilemma seemed to prove that she was
concerned with the natural and reasonable emotions of life and
not altogether a victim to intellectual eagerness and vague
ambitions--ambitions reaching beyond Lord Warburton's beautiful appeal,
reaching to something indefinable and possibly not commendable. In so
far as the indefinable had an influence upon Isabel's behaviour at this
juncture, it was not the conception, even unformulated, of a union with
Caspar Goodwood; for however she might have resisted conquest at her
English suitor's large quiet hands she was at least as far removed
from the disposition to let the young man from Boston take positive
possession of her. The sentiment in which She sought refuge after
reading his letter was a critical view of his having come abroad; for it
was part of the influence he had upon her that he s