Chapter 12 - Page 2

images--things as to which the question would be
whether they pleased her sublime soul. Lord Warburton loomed up
before her, largely and brightly, as a collection of attributes
and powers which were not to be measured by this simple rule,
but which demanded a different sort of appreciation--an
appreciation that the girl, with her habit of judging quickly and
freely, felt she lacked patience to bestow. He appeared to demand
of her something that no one else, as it were, had presumed to
do. What she felt was that a territorial, a political, a social
magnate had conceived the design of drawing her into the system
in which he rather invidiously lived and moved. A certain
instinct, not imperious, but persuasive, told her to resist--
murmured to her that virtually she had a system and an orbit of
her own. It told her other things besides--things which both
contradicted and confirmed each other; that a girl might do much
worse than trust herself to such a man and that it would be very
interesting to see something of his system from his own point of
view; that on the other hand, however, there was evidently a
great deal of it which she should regard only as a complication
of every hour, and that even in the whole there was something
stiff and stupid which would make it a burden. Furthermore there
was a young man lately come from America who had no system at
all, but who had a character of which it was useless for her to
try to persuade herself that the impression on her mind had been
light. The letter she carried in her pocket all sufficiently
reminded her of the contrary. Smile not, however, I venture to
repeat, at this simple young woman from Albany who debated
whether she should accept an English peer before he had offered
himself and who was disposed to believe that on the whole she
could do better. She was a person of great good faith, and
if there was a great deal of folly in her wisdom those who judge
her severely may have the satisfaction of finding that, later,
she became consistently wise only at the cost of an amount of
folly which will constitute almost a direct appeal to charity.

Lord Warburton seemed quite ready to walk, to sit or to do
anything that Isabel should propose, and he gave her this
assurance with his usual air of being particularly pleased to
exercise a social virtue. But he was, nevertheless, not in
command of his emotions, and as he strolled beside her for a
moment, in silence, looking at her without letting her know it,
there was something embarrassed in his glance and his misdirected
laughter. Yes, assuredly--as we have touched on the point, we may
return to it for a moment again--the English are the most
romantic people in the world and Lord Warburton was about to