father
resumed softly: "What do you think of your cousin?"

At this Ralph started, meeting the question with a strained smile. "Do I
understand you to propose that I should marry Isabel?"

"Well, that's what it comes to in the end. Don't you like Isabel?"

"Yes, very much." And Ralph got up from his chair and wandered over to
the fire. He stood before it an instant and then he stooped and stirred
it mechanically. "I like Isabel very much," he repeated.

"Well," said his father, "I know she likes you. She has told me how much
she likes you."

"Did she remark that she would like to marry me?"

"No, but she can't have anything against you. And she's the most
charming young lady I've ever seen. And she would be good to you. I have
thought a great deal about it."

"So have I," said Ralph, coming back to the bedside again. "I don't mind
telling you that."

"You ARE in love with her then? I should think you would be. It's as if
she came over on purpose."

"No, I'm not in love with her; but I should be if--if certain things
were different."

"Ah, things are always different from what they might be," said the old
man. "If you wait for them to change you'll never do anything. I don't
know whether you know," he went on; "but I suppose there's no harm in
my alluding to it at such an hour as this: there was some one wanted to
marry Isabel the other day, and she wouldn't have him."

"I know she refused Warburton: he told me himself."

"Well, that proves there's a chance for somebody else."

"Somebody else took his chance the other day in London--and got nothing
by it."

"Was it you?" Mr. Touchett eagerly asked.

"No, it was an older friend; a poor gentleman who came over from America
to see about it."

"Well, I'm sorry for him, whoever he was. But it only proves what I
say--that the way's open to you."

"If it is, dear father, it's all the greater pity that I'm unable to
tread it. I haven't many convictions; but I have three or four that I
hold strongly. One is that people, on the whole, had better not marry
their cousins. Another is that people in an advanced stage of pulmonary
disorder had better not marry at all."

The old man raised his weak hand and moved it to and fro before his
face. "What do you mean by that? You look at things in a way that would
make everything wrong. What sort of a cousin is a cousin that you
had never seen for more than twenty years of her life? We're all each
other's cousins, and