fied non-residence. She
detested bread-sauce, which, as she said, looked like a poultice
and tasted like soap; she objected to the consumption of beer by
her maid-servants; and she affirmed that the British laundress (Mrs.
Touchett was very particular about the appearance of her linen) was not
a mistress of her art. At fixed intervals she paid a visit to her own
country; but this last had been longer than any of its predecessors.

She had taken up her niece--there was little doubt of that. One wet
afternoon, some four months earlier than the occurrence lately narrated,
this young lady had been seated alone with a book. To say she was so
occupied is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her
love of knowledge had a fertilising quality and her imagination was
strong. There was at this time, however, a want of fresh taste in
her situation which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to
correct. The visitor had not been announced; the girl heard her at last
walking about the adjoining room. It was in an old house at Albany, a
large, square, double house, with a notice of sale in the windows of one
of the lower apartments. There were two entrances, one of which had
long been out of use but had never been removed. They were exactly
alike--large white doors, with an arched frame and wide side-lights,
perched upon little "stoops" of red stone, which descended sidewise
to the brick pavement of the street. The two houses together formed a
single dwelling, the party-wall having been removed and the rooms placed
in communication. These rooms, above-stairs, were extremely numerous,
and were painted all over exactly alike, in a yellowish white which had
grown sallow with time. On the third floor there was a sort of arched
passage, connecting the two sides of the house, which Isabel and her
sisters used in their childhood to call the tunnel and which, though it
was short and well lighted, always seemed to the girl to be strange and
lonely, especially on winter afternoons. She had been in the house,
at different periods, as a child; in those days her grandmother lived
there. Then there had been an absence of ten years, followed by a return
to Albany before her father's death. Her grandmother, old Mrs. Archer,
had exercised, chiefly within the limits of the family, a large
hospitality in the early period, and the little girls often spent weeks
under her roof--weeks of which Isabel had the happiest memory. The
manner