Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

Mrs. Touchett was certainly a person of many oddities, of which
her behaviour on returning to her husband's house after many
months was a noticeable specimen. She had her own way of doing
all that she did, and this is the simplest description of a
character which, although by no means without liberal motions,
rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity. Mrs.
Touchett might do a great deal of good, but she never pleased.
This way of her own, of which she was so fond, was not
intrinsically offensive--it was just unmistakeably distinguished
from the ways of others. The edges of her conduct were so very
clear-cut that for susceptible persons it sometimes had a
knife-like effect. That hard fineness came out in her deportment
during the first hours of her return from America, under
circumstances in which it might have seemed that her first act
would have been to exchange greetings with her husband and son.
Mrs. Touchett, for reasons which she deemed excellent, always
retired on such occasions into impenetrable seclusion, postponing
the more sentimental ceremony until she had repaired the disorder
of dress with a completeness which had the less reason to be of
high importance as neither beauty nor vanity were concerned in
it. She was a plain-faced old woman, without graces and without
any great elegance, but with an extreme respect for her own
motives. She was usually prepared to explain these--when the
explanation was asked as a favour; and in such a case they proved
totally different from those that had been attributed to her. She
was virtually separated from her husband, but she appeared to
perceive nothing irregular in the situation. It had become clear,
at an early stage of their community, that they should never
desire the same thing at the same moment, and this appearance had
prompted her to rescue disagreement from the vulgar realm of
accident. She did what she could to erect it into a law--a much
more edifying aspect of it--by going to live in Florence, where
she bought a house and established herself; and by leaving her
husband to take care of the English branch of his bank. This
arrangement greatly pleased her; it was so felicitously definite.
It struck her husband in the same light, in a foggy square in
London, where it was at times the most definite fact he
discerned; but he would have preferred that such unnatural things
should have a greater vagueness. To agree to disagree had cost
him an effort; he was ready to agree to almost anything but that,
and saw no reason why either assent or dissent should be so
terribly consistent. Mrs. Touchett indulged in no regrets nor
speculations, and usually came once a year to spend a month with
her husband, a period