Chapter 48 - Page 2

day Caspar Goodwood came to see him, and he informed
his visitor that Miss Stackpole had taken him up and was to
conduct him back to England. "Ah then," said Caspar, "I'm afraid
I shall be a fifth wheel to the coach. Mrs. Osmond has made me
promise to go with you."

"Good heavens--it's the golden age! You're all too kind."

"The kindness on my part is to her; it's hardly to you."

"Granting that, SHE'S kind," smiled Ralph.

"To get people to go with you? Yes, that's a sort of kindness,"
Goodwood answered without lending himself to the joke. "For
myself, however," he added, "I'll go so far as to say that I
would much rather travel with you and Miss Stackpole than with
Miss Stackpole alone."

"And you'd rather stay here than do either," said Ralph. "There's
really no need of your coming. Henrietta's extraordinarily
efficient."

"I'm sure of that. But I've promised Mrs. Osmond."

"You can easily get her to let you off."

"She wouldn't let me off for the world. She wants me to look
after you, but that isn't the principal thing. The principal
thing is that she wants me to leave Rome."

"Ah, you see too much in it," Ralph suggested.

"I bore her," Goodwood went on; "she has nothing to say to me, so
she invented that."

"Oh then, if it's a convenience to her I certainly will take you
with me. Though I don't see why it should be a convenience,"
Ralph added in a moment.

"Well," said Caspar Goodwood simply, "she thinks I'm watching
her."

"Watching her?"

"Trying to make out if she's happy."

"That's easy to make out," said Ralph. "She's the most visibly
happy woman I know."

"Exactly so; I'm satisfied," Goodwood answered dryly. For all his
dryness, however, he had more to say. "I've been watching her; I
was an old friend and it seemed to me I had the right. She
pretends to be happy; that was what she undertook to be; and I
thought I should like to see for myself what it amounts to. I've
seen," he continued with a harsh ring in his voice, "and I don't
want to see any more. I'm now quite ready to go."

"Do you know it strikes me as about time you should?" Ralph
rejoined. And this was the only conversation these gentlemen had
about Isabel Osmond.

Henrietta made her preparations for departure, and among them she
found it proper to say a few words to the Countess Gemini, who
returned at Miss Stackpole's pension the visit which this lady
had paid her in Florence.

"You were very wrong about Lord Warburton," she remarked to the
Countess. "I think it right you should know that."

"About his making love to Isabel? My poor lady, he was at her
house three times a day. He has left traces of