the American post
would largely and showily address them to publicity. It was to be feared
that she was indeed drifting toward those abysses of sophistication as
to which Isabel, wishing for a good-humoured retort, had warned her.
There might be danger in store for Isabel; but it was scarcely to be
hoped that Miss Stackpole, on her side, would find permanent rest in any
adoption of the views of a class pledged to all the old abuses. Isabel
continued to warn her good-humouredly; Lady Pensil's obliging brother
was sometimes, on our heroine's lips, an object of irreverent and
facetious allusion. Nothing, however, could exceed Henrietta's
amiability on this point; she used to abound in the sense of Isabel's
irony and to enumerate with elation the hours she had spent with this
perfect man of the world--a term that had ceased to make with her, as
previously, for opprobrium. Then, a few moments later, she would forget
that they had been talking jocosely and would mention with impulsive
earnestness some expedition she had enjoyed in his company. She would
say: "Oh, I know all about Versailles; I went there with Mr. Bantling. I
was bound to see it thoroughly--I warned him when we went out there that
I was thorough: so we spent three days at the hotel and wandered all
over the place. It was lovely weather--a kind of Indian summer, only not
so good. We just lived in that park. Oh yes; you can't tell me anything
about Versailles." Henrietta appeared to have made arrangements to meet
her gallant friend during the spring in Italy.

CHAPTER XXI

Mrs. Touchett, before arriving in Paris, had fixed the day for her
departure and by the middle of February had begun to travel southward.
She interrupted her journey to pay a visit to her son, who at San Remo,
on the Italian shore of the Mediterranean, had been spending a dull,
bright winter beneath a slow-moving white umbrella. Isabel went with her
aunt as a matter of course, though Mrs. Touchett, with homely, customary
logic, had laid before her a pair of alternatives.

"Now, of course, you're completely your own mistress and are as free as
the bird on the bough. I don't mean you were not so before, but you're
at present on a different footing--property erects a kind of barrier.
You can do a great many things if you're rich which would be severely
criticised if you were poor. You can go and come, you can travel alone,
you can have your own establishment: I mean of course if you'll take