"

"Very good. If you do, our friendship's at an end."

"Perhaps some day--after a while--you'll give me leave."

"Give you leave to make me unhappy?"

He hesitated. "To tell you again--" But he checked himself. "I'll keep
it down. I'll keep it down always."

Ralph Touchett had been joined in his visit to the excavation by Miss
Stackpole and her attendant, and these three now emerged from among the
mounds of earth and stone collected round the aperture and came into
sight of Isabel and her companion. Poor Ralph hailed his friend with joy
qualified by wonder, and Henrietta exclaimed in a high voice "Gracious,
there's that lord!" Ralph and his English neighbour greeted with the
austerity with which, after long separations, English neighbours greet,
and Miss Stackpole rested her large intellectual gaze upon the sunburnt
traveller. But she soon established her relation to the crisis. "I don't
suppose you remember me, sir."

"Indeed I do remember you," said Lord Warburton. "I asked you to come
and see me, and you never came."

"I don't go everywhere I'm asked," Miss Stackpole answered coldly.

"Ah well, I won't ask you again," laughed the master of Lockleigh.

"If you do I'll go; so be sure!"

Lord Warburton, for all his hilarity, seemed sure enough. Mr. Bantling
had stood by without claiming a recognition, but he now took occasion
to nod to his lordship, who answered him with a friendly "Oh, you here,
Bantling?" and a hand-shake.

"Well," said Henrietta, "I didn't know you knew him!"

"I guess you don't know every one I know," Mr. Bantling rejoined
facetiously.

"I thought that when an Englishman knew a lord he always told you."

"Ah, I'm afraid Bantling was ashamed of me," Lord Warburton laughed
again. Isabel took pleasure in that note; she gave a small sigh of
relief as they kept their course homeward.

The next day was Sunday; she spent her morning over two long
letters--one to her sister Lily, the other to Madame Merle; but in
neither of these epistles did she mention the fact that a rejected
suitor had threatened her with another appeal. Of a Sunday afternoon
all good Romans (and the best Romans are often the northern barbarians)
follow the custom of going to vespers at Saint Peter's; and it had been
agreed among our friends that they would drive together to the great
church. After lunch, an hour before the carriage came, Lord Warburton
presented himself at the Hotel de Paris and paid a visit to the t