She had never told her husband about him-never let Osmond know of his visits to her in Florence; a reserve not dictated in the early period by a want of confidence in Osmond, but simply by the consideration that the young man's disappointment was not her secret but his own.It would be wrong of her, she had believed, to convey it to another, and Mr.Goodwood's affairs could have, after all, little interest for Gilbert.When it had come to the point she had never written to him; it seemed to her that, considering his grievance, the least she could do was to let him alone.Nevertheless she would have been glad to be in some way nearer to him.It was not that it ever occurred to her that she might have married him; even after the consequences of her actual union had grown vivid to her that particular reflection, though she indulged in so many, had not had the assurance to present itself.But on finding herself in trouble he had become a member of that circle of things with which she wished to set herself right.I have mentioned how passionately she needed to feel that her unhappiness should not have come to her through her own fault.She had no near prospect of dying, and yet she wished to make her peace with the world-to put her spiritual affairs in order.
It came back to her from time to time that there was an account still to be settled with Caspar, and she saw herself disposed or able to settle it to-day on terms easier for him than ever before.
Still, when she learned he was coming to Rome she felt all afraid;it would be more disagreeable for him than for any one else to make out-since he would make it out, as over a falsified balance-sheet or something of that sort-the intimate disarray of her affairs.Deep in her breast she believed that he had invested his all in her happiness, while the others had invested only a part.He was one more person from whom she should have to conceal her stress.She was reassured, however, after he arrived in Rome, for he spent several days without coming to see her.
Henrietta Stackpole, it may well be imagined, was much more punctual, and Isabel was largely favoured with the society of her friend.She threw herself into it, for now that she had made such a point of keeping her conscience clear, that was one way of proving she had not been superficial-the more so as the years, in their flight, had rather enriched than blighted those peculiarities which had been humorously criticized by persons less interested than Isabel, and which were still marked enough to give loyalty a spice of heroism.
Henrietta was as keen and quick and fresh as ever, and as neat and bright and fair.Her remarkably open eyes, lighted like great glazed railway-stations, had put up no shutters; her attire had lost none of its crispness, her opinions none of their national reference.She was by no means quite unchanged, however; it struck Isabel she had grown vague.Of old she had never been vague; though undertaking many enquiries at once, she had managed to be entire and pointed about each.She had a reason for everything she did; she fairly bristled with motives.Formerly, when she came to Europe it was because she wished to see it, but now, having already seen it, she had no such excuse.She didn't for a moment pretend that the desire to examine decaying civilizations had anything to do with her present enterprise;her journey was rather an expression of her independence of the old world than of a sense of further obligations to it."It's nothing to come to Europe," she said to Isabel; "it doesn't seem to me one needs so many reasons for that.It is something to stay at home;this is much more important." It was not therefore with a sense of doing anything very important that she treated herself to another pilgrimage to Rome; she had seen the place before and carefully inspected it; her present act was simply a sign of familiarity, of her knowing all about it, of her having as good a right as any one else to be there.This was all very well, and Henrietta was restless; she had a perfect right to be restless too, if one came to that.But she had after all a better reason for coming to Rome than that she cared for it so little.Her friend easily recognized it, and with it the worth of the other's fidelity.She had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because she had guessed that Isabel was sad.Henrietta guessed a great deal, but she had never guessed so happily as that.
Isabel's satisfactions just now were few, but even if they had been more numerous there would still have been something of individual joy in her sense of being justified in having always thought highly of Henrietta.She had made large concessions with regard to her, and had yet insisted that, with all abatements, she was very valuable.
It was not her own triumph, however, that she found good; it was simply the relief of confessing to this confidant, the first person to whom she had owned it, that she was not in the least at her ease.
Henrietta had herself approached this point with the smallest possible delay, and had accused her to her face of being wretched.She was a woman, she was a sister; she was not Ralph, nor Lord Warburton, nor Caspar Goodwood, and Isabel could speak.
"Yes, I'm wretched," she said very mildly.She hated to hear herself say it; she tried to say it as judicially as possible.
"What does he do to you?" Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were enquiring into the operations of a quack doctor.
"He does nothing.But he doesn't like me.""He's very hard to please!" cried Miss Stackpole."Why don't you leave him?""I can't change that way," Isabel said.
"Why not, I should like to know? You won't confess that you've made a mistake.You're too proud.""I don't know whether I'm too proud.But I can't publish my mistake.
I don't think that's decent.I'd much rather die.""You won't think so always," said Henrietta.
