er nicer if he
looked, for instance, a little differently. His jaw was too square and
set and his figure too straight and stiff: these things suggested a want
of easy consonance with the deeper rhythms of life. Then she viewed with
reserve a habit he had of dressing always in the same manner; it was
not apparently that he wore the same clothes continually, for, on the
contrary, his garments had a way of looking rather too new. But they all
seemed of the same piece; the figure, the stuff, was so drearily usual.
She had reminded herself more than once that this was a frivolous
objection to a person of his importance; and then she had amended the
rebuke by saying that it would be a frivolous objection only if she
were in love with him. She was not in love with him and therefore might
criticise his small defects as well as his great--which latter consisted
in the collective reproach of his being too serious, or, rather, not of
his being so, since one could never be, but certainly of his seeming so.
He showed his appetites and designs too simply and artlessly; when one
was alone with him he talked too much about the same subject, and when
other people were present he talked too little about anything. And yet
he was of supremely strong, clean make--which was so much she saw the
different fitted parts of him as she had seen, in museums and portraits,
the different fitted parts of armoured warriors--in plates of steel
handsomely inlaid with gold. It was very strange: where, ever, was any
tangible link between her impression and her act? Caspar Goodwood had
never corresponded to her idea of a delightful person, and she supposed
that this was why he left her so harshly critical. When, however, Lord
Warburton, who not only did correspond with it, but gave an extension to
the term, appealed to her approval, she found herself still unsatisfied.
It was certainly strange.

The sense of her incoherence was not a help to answering Mr. Goodwood's
letter, and Isabel determined to leave it a while unhonoured. If he
had determined to persecute her he must take the consequences; foremost
among which was his being left to perceive how little it charmed her
that he should come down to Gardencourt. She was already liable to the
incursions of one suitor at this place, and though it might be pleasant
to be appreciated in opposite quarters there was a kind of grossness in
entertaining two such passionate pleaders at once, even in a case where
the