Intellectually, doubtless, she had made immense strides; but she appeared to have achieved few of those social conquests of which Mrs.Ludlow had expected to admire the trophies.Lily's conception of such achievements was extremely vague; but this was exactly what she had expected of Isabel-to give it form and body.Isabel could have done as well as she had done in New York; and Mrs.Ludlow appealed to her husband to know whether there was any privilege she enjoyed in Europe which the society of that city might not offer her.We know ourselves that Isabel had made conquests- whether inferior or not to those she might have effected in her native land it would be a delicate matter to decide; and it is not altogether with a feeling of complacency that I again mention that she had not rendered these honourable victories public.She had not told her sister the history of Lord Warburton, nor had she given her a hint of Mr.Osmond's state of mind; and she had had no better reason for her silence than that she didn't wish to speak.It was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking deep, in secret, of romance, she was as little disposed to ask poor Lily's advice as she would have been to close that rare volume forever.But Lily knew nothing of these discriminations, and could only pronounce her sister's career a strange anti-climax- an impression confirmed by the fact that Isabel's silence about Mr.Osmond, for instance, was in direct proportion to the frequency with which he occupied her thoughts.As this happened very often it sometimes appeared to Mrs.Ludlow that she had lost her courage.So uncanny a result of so exhilarating an incident as inheriting a fortune was of course perplexing to the cheerful Lily; it added to her general sense that Isabel was not at all like other people.
Our young lady's courage, however, might have been taken as reaching its height after her relations had gone home.She could imagine braver things than spending the winter in Paris- Paris had sides by which it so resembled New York, Paris was like smart, neat prose- and her close correspondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such flights.She had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and wantonness of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform at the Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after the departure of the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her children to their ship at Liverpool.It had been good for her to regale; she was very conscious of that; she was very observant, as we know, of what was good for her, and her effort was constantly to find something that was good enough.To profit by the present advantage till the latest moment she had made the journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers.She would have accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund Ludlow had asked her, as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety and she asked such impossible questions.Isabel watched the train move away;she kissed her hand to the elder of her small nephews, a demonstrative child who leaned dangerously far out of the window of the carriage and made separation an occasion of violent hilarity, and then she walked back into the foggy London street.The world lay before her- she could do whatever she chose.There was a deep thrill in it all, but for the present her choice was tolerably discreet; she chose simply to walk back from Euston Square to her hotel.The early dusk of a November afternoon had already closed in; the street-lamps, in the thick, brown air, looked weak and red; our heroine was unattended and Euston Square was a long way from Piccadilly.But Isabel performed the journey with a positive enjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost on purpose, in order to get more sensations, so that she was disappointed when an obliging policeman easily set her right again.She was so fond of the spectacle of human life that she enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in the London streets- the moving crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops, the flaring stalls, the dark, shining dampness of everything.That evening, at her hotel, she wrote to Madame Merle that she should start in a day or two for Rome.She made her way down to Rome without touching at Florence- having gone first to Venice and then proceeded southward by Ancona.She accomplished this journey without other assistance than that of her servant, for her natural protectors were not now on the ground.Ralph Touchett was spending the winter at Corfu, and Miss Stackpole, in the September previous, had been recalled to America by a telegram from the Interviewer.This journal offered its brilliant correspondent a fresher field for her genius than the mouldering cities of Europe, and Henrietta was cheered on her way by a promise from Mr.Bantling that he would soon come over to see her.Isabel wrote to Mrs.Touchett to apologize for not presenting herself just yet in Florence, and her aunt replied characteristically enough.
Apologies, Mrs.Touchett intimated, were of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herself never dealt in such articles.One either did the thing or one didn't, and what one "would" have done belonged to the sphere of the irrelevant, like the idea of a future life or of the origin of things.Her letter was frank, but (a rare case with Mrs.Touchett) not so frank as it pretended.She easily forgave her niece for not stopping at Florence, because she took it for a sign that Gilbert Osmond was less in question there than formerly.She watched of course to see if he would now find a pretext for going to Rome, and derived some comfort from learning that he had not been guilty of an absence.
