Chapter 13 - Page 2

glad he
wrote to you; it was right that he should, and he would be
certain to do what was right."

"Ah well, I guess you do like him!" Mr. Touchett declared. "You
needn't pretend you don't."

"I like him extremely; I'm very free to admit that. But I don't
wish to marry any one just now."

"You think some one may come along whom you may like better.
Well, that's very likely," said Mr. Touchett, who appeared to
wish to show his kindness to the girl by easing off her decision,
as it were, and finding cheerful reasons for it.

"I don't care if I don't meet any one else. I like Lord Warburton
quite well enough." she fell into that appearance of a sudden
change of point of view with which she sometimes startled and
even displeased her interlocutors.

Her uncle, however, seemed proof against either of these
impressions. "He's a very fine man," he resumed in a tone which
might have passed for that of encouragement. "His letter was one
of the pleasantest I've received for some weeks. I suppose one of
the reasons I liked it was that it was all about you; that is all
except the part that was about himself. I suppose he told you all
that."

"He would have told me everything I wished to ask him," Isabel
said.

"But you didn't feel curious?"

"My curiosity would have been idle--once I had determined to
decline his offer."

"You didn't find it sufficiently attractive?" Mr. Touchett
enquired.

She was silent a little. "I suppose it was that," she presently
admitted. "But I don't know why."

"Fortunately ladies are not obliged to give reasons," said her
uncle. "There's a great deal that's attractive about such an
idea; but I don't see why the English should want to entice us
away from our native land. I know that we try to attract them
over there, but that's because our population is insufficient.
Here, you know, they're rather crowded. However, I presume
there's room for charming young ladies everywhere."

"There seems to have been room here for you," said Isabel, whose
eyes had been wandering over the large pleasure-spaces of the
park.

Mr. Touchett gave a shrewd, conscious smile. "There's room
everywhere, my dear, if you'll pay for it. I sometimes think I've
paid too much for this. Perhaps you also might have to pay too
much."

"Perhaps I might," the girl replied.

That suggestion gave her something more definite to rest on than
she had found in her own thoughts, and the fact of this
association of her uncle's mild acuteness with her dilemma seemed
to prove that she was concerned with the natural and reasonable
emotions of life and not altogether a victim to intellectual
eagerness and vague