Chapter 4 - Page 2

do something handsome for
Isabel; she has evidently taken a great fancy to her."

"What is it you wish her to do?" Edmund Ludlow asked. "Make her a
big present?"

"No indeed; nothing of the sort. But take an interest in her--
sympathise with her. She's evidently just the sort of person to
appreciate her. She has lived so much in foreign society; she
told Isabel all about it. You know you've always thought Isabel
rather foreign."

"You want her to give her a little foreign sympathy, eh? Don't
you think she gets enough at home?"

"Well, she ought to go abroad," said Mrs. Ludlow. "She's just the
person to go abroad."

"And you want the old lady to take her, is that it?"

"She has offered to take her--she's dying to have Isabel go. But
what I want her to do when she gets her there is to give her all
the advantages. I'm sure all we've got to do," said Mrs. Ludlow,
"is to give her a chance."

"A chance for what?"

"A chance to develop."

"Oh Moses!" Edmund Ludlow exclaimed. "I hope she isn't going to
develop any more!"

"If I were not sure you only said that for argument I should feel
very badly," his wife replied. "But you know you love her."

"Do you know I love you?" the young man said, jocosely, to Isabel
a little later, while he brushed his hat.

"I'm sure I don't care whether you do or not!" exclaimed the
girl; whose voice and smile, however, were less haughty than her
words.

"Oh, she feels so grand since Mrs. Touchett's visit," said her
sister.

But Isabel challenged this assertion with a good deal of
seriousness. "You must not say that, Lily. I don't feel grand at
all."

"I'm sure there's no harm," said the conciliatory Lily.

"Ah, but there's nothing in Mrs. Touchett's visit to make one
feel grand."

"Oh," exclaimed Ludlow, "she's grander than ever!"

"Whenever I feel grand," said the girl, "it will be for a better
reason."

Whether she felt grand or no, she at any rate felt different, as
if something had happened to her. Left to herself for the evening
she sat a while under the lamp, her hands empty, her usual
avocations unheeded. Then she rose and moved about the room, and
from one room to another, preferring the places where the vague
lamplight expired. She was restless and even agitated; at moments
she trembled a little. The importance of what had happened was
out of proportion to its appearance; there had really been a
change in her life. What it would bring with it was as yet
extremely indefinite; but Isabel was in a situation that gave a
value to any change. She had a desire to leave the past behind
her and, as she said to herself, to begin afresh. This