Chapter 3 - Page 2

during which she apparently took pains to
convince him that she had adopted the right system. She was not
fond of the English style of life, and had three or four reasons
for it to which she currently alluded; they bore upon minor
points of that ancient order, but for Mrs. Touchett they amply
justified 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