Chapter 21

CHAPTER XXI

Mrs. Touchett, before arriving in Paris, had fixed the day for
her departure and by the middle of February had begun to travel
southward. She interrupted her journey to pay a visit to her son,
who at San Remo, on the Italian shore of the Mediterranean, had
been spending a dull, bright winter beneath a slow-moving white
umbrella. Isabel went with her aunt as a matter of course, though
Mrs. Touchett, with homely, customary logic, had laid before her
a pair of alternatives.

"Now, of course, you're completely your own mistress and are as
free as the bird on the bough. I don't mean you were not so
before, but you're at present on a different footing--property
erects a kind of barrier. You can do a great many things if
you're rich which would be severely criticised if you were poor.
You can go and come, you can travel alone, you can have your own
establishment: I mean of course if you'll take a companion--some
decayed gentlewoman, with a darned cashmere and dyed hair, who
paints on velvet. You don't think you'd like that? Of course you
can do as you please; I only want you to understand how much
you're at liberty. You might take Miss Stackpole as your dame de
compagnie; she'd keep people off very well. I think, however, that
it's a great deal better you should remain with me, in spite of
there being no obligation. It's better for several reasons, quite
apart from your liking it. I shouldn't think you'd like it, but I
recommend you to make the sacrifice. Of course whatever novelty
there may have been at first in my society has quite passed away,
and you see me as I am--a dull, obstinate, narrow-minded old woman."

"I don't think you're at all dull," Isabel had replied to this.

"But you do think I'm obstinate and narrow-minded? I told you so!"
said Mrs. Touchett with much elation at being justified.

Isabel remained for the present with her aunt, because, in spite
of eccentric impulses, she had a great regard for what was usually
deemed decent, and a young gentlewoman without visible relations
had always struck her as a flower without foliage. It was true
that Mrs. Touchett's conversation had never again appeared so
brilliant as that first afternoon in Albany, when she sat in her
damp waterproof and sketched the opportunities that Europe would
offer to a young person of taste. This, however, was in a great
measure the girl's own fault; she had got a glimpse of her aunt's
experience, and her imagination constantly anticipated the
judgements and emotions of a woman who had very little of the same
faculty. Apart from this, Mrs. Touchett had a great merit; she was
as honest as a pair of compasses. There was a comfort in her
stiffness and firmness; you knew exactly where