ice, "and I don't want to see any more. I'm now quite
ready to go."

"Do you know it strikes me as about time you should?" Ralph rejoined.
And this was the only conversation these gentlemen had about Isabel
Osmond.

Henrietta made her preparations for departure, and among them she found
it proper to say a few words to the Countess Gemini, who returned at
Miss Stackpole's pension the visit which this lady had paid her in
Florence.

"You were very wrong about Lord Warburton," she remarked to the
Countess. "I think it right you should know that."

"About his making love to Isabel? My poor lady, he was at her house
three times a day. He has left traces of his passage!" the Countess
cried.

"He wished to marry your niece; that's why he came to the house."

The Countess stared, and then with an inconsiderate laugh: "Is that the
story that Isabel tells? It isn't bad, as such things go. If he wishes
to marry my niece, pray why doesn't he do it? Perhaps he has gone to buy
the wedding-ring and will come back with it next month, after I'm gone."

"No, he'll not come back. Miss Osmond doesn't wish to marry him."

"She's very accommodating! I knew she was fond of Isabel, but I didn't
know she carried it so far."

"I don't understand you," said Henrietta coldly, and reflecting that
the Countess was unpleasantly perverse. "I really must stick to my
point--that Isabel never encouraged the attentions of Lord Warburton."

"My dear friend, what do you and I know about it? All we know is that my
brother's capable of everything."

"I don't know what your brother's capable of," said Henrietta with
dignity.

"It's not her encouraging Warburton that I complain of; it's her sending
him away. I want particularly to see him. Do you suppose she thought
I would make him faithless?" the Countess continued with audacious
insistence. "However, she's only keeping him, one can feel that. The
house is full of him there; he's quite in the air. Oh yes, he has left
traces; I'm sure I shall see him yet."

"Well," said Henrietta after a little, with one of those inspirations
which had made the fortune of her letters to the Interviewer, "perhaps
he'll be more successful with you than with Isabel!"

When she told her friend of the offer she had made Ralph Isabel replied
that she could have done nothing that would have pleased her more. It
had always been her faith that at bottom Ralph and this young woman were
made to understand each other. "I