tell him not to give up. If I didn't
believe Isabel would come round," Miss Stackpole added--"well, I'd give
up myself. I mean I'd give HER up!"

CHAPTER XVIII

It had occurred to Ralph that, in the conditions, Isabel's parting with
her friend might be of a slightly embarrassed nature, and he went down
to the door of the hotel in advance of his cousin, who, after a slight
delay, followed with the traces of an unaccepted remonstrance, as he
thought, in her eyes. The two made the journey to Gardencourt in almost
unbroken silence, and the servant who met them at the station had no
better news to give them of Mr. Touchett--a fact which caused Ralph to
congratulate himself afresh on Sir Matthew Hope's having promised to
come down in the five o'clock train and spend the night. Mrs. Touchett,
he learned, on reaching home, had been constantly with the old man and
was with him at that moment; and this fact made Ralph say to himself
that, after all, what his mother wanted was just easy occasion. The
finer natures were those that shone at the larger times. Isabel went to
her own room, noting throughout the house that perceptible hush which
precedes a crisis. At the end of an hour, however, she came downstairs
in search of her aunt, whom she wished to ask about Mr. Touchett. She
went into the library, but Mrs. Touchett was not there, and as the
weather, which had been damp and chill, was now altogether spoiled, it
was not probable she had gone for her usual walk in the grounds. Isabel
was on the point of ringing to send a question to her room, when this
purpose quickly yielded to an unexpected sound--the sound of low music
proceeding apparently from the saloon. She knew her aunt never touched
the piano, and the musician was therefore probably Ralph, who played for
his own amusement. That he should have resorted to this recreation at
the present time indicated apparently that his anxiety about his father
had been relieved; so that the girl took her way, almost with restored
cheer, toward the source of the harmony. The drawing-room at Gardencourt
was an apartment of great distances, and, as the piano was placed at
the end of it furthest removed from the door at which she entered, her
arrival was not noticed by the person seated before the instrument.
This person was neither Ralph nor his mother; it was a lady whom
Isabel immediately saw to be a stranger to herself, though her back was
presented to the door. This back--an ample a