of marriage?" And Isabel ventured to add that her
aunt appeared to her to have made very little use of Mr. Touchett.

"Your uncle's not an English nobleman," said Mrs. Touchett, "though even
if he had been I should still probably have taken up my residence in
Florence."

"Do you think Lord Warburton could make me any better than I am?" the
girl asked with some animation. "I don't mean I'm too good to improve. I
mean that I don't love Lord Warburton enough to marry him."

"You did right to refuse him then," said Mrs. Touchett in her smallest,
sparest voice. "Only, the next great offer you get, I hope you'll manage
to come up to your standard."

"We had better wait till the offer comes before we talk about it. I
hope very much I may have no more offers for the present. They upset me
completely."

"You probably won't be troubled with them if you adopt permanently the
Bohemian manner of life. However, I've promised Ralph not to criticise."

"I'll do whatever Ralph says is right," Isabel returned. "I've unbounded
confidence in Ralph."

"His mother's much obliged to you!" this lady dryly laughed.

"It seems to me indeed she ought to feel it!" Isabel irrepressibly
answered.

Ralph had assured her that there would be no violation of decency in
their paying a visit--the little party of three--to the sights of the
metropolis; but Mrs. Touchett took a different view. Like many ladies of
her country who had lived a long time in Europe, she had completely
lost her native tact on such points, and in her reaction, not in itself
deplorable, against the liberty allowed to young persons beyond the
seas, had fallen into gratuitous and exaggerated scruples. Ralph
accompanied their visitors to town and established them at a quiet inn
in a street that ran at right angles to Piccadilly. His first idea had
been to take them to his father's house in Winchester Square, a large,
dull mansion which at this period of the year was shrouded in silence
and brown holland; but he bethought himself that, the cook being at
Gardencourt, there was no one in the house to get them their meals,
and Pratt's Hotel accordingly became their resting-place. Ralph, on his
side, found quarters in Winchester Square, having a "den" there of which
he was very fond and being familiar with deeper fears than that of a
cold kitchen. He availed himself largely indeed of the resources of
Pratt's Hotel, beginning his day with an early visit to his fellow
travellers,