Chapter 54

CHAPTER LIV

Isabel's arrival at Gardencourt on this second occasion was even
quieter than it had been on the first. Ralph Touchett kept but a
small household, and to the new servants Mrs. Osmond was a
stranger; so that instead of being conducted to her own apartment
she was coldly shown into the drawing-room and left to wait while
her name was carried up to her aunt. She waited a long time; Mrs.
Touchett appeared in no hurry to come to her. She grew impatient
at last; she grew nervous and scared--as scared as if the objects
about her had begun to show for conscious things, watching her
trouble with grotesque grimaces. The day was dark and cold; the
dusk was thick in the corners of the wide brown rooms. The house
was perfectly still--with a stillness that Isabel remembered; it
had filled all the place for days before the death of her uncle.
She left the drawing-room and wandered about--strolled into the
library and along the gallery of pictures, where, in the deep
silence, her footstep made an echo. Nothing was changed; she
recognised everything she had seen years before; it might have
been only yesterday she had stood there. She envied the security
of valuable "pieces" which change by no hair's breadth, only grow
in value, while their owners lose inch by inch youth, happiness,
beauty; and she became aware that she was walking about as her
aunt had done on the day she had come to see her in Albany. She
was changed enough since then--that had been the beginning. It
suddenly struck her that if her Aunt Lydia had not come that day
in just that way and found her alone, everything might have been
different. She might have had another life and she might have
been a woman more blest. She stopped in the gallery in front of a
small picture--a charming and precious Bonington--upon which her
eyes rested a long time. But she was not looking at the picture;
she was wondering whether if her aunt had not come that day in
Albany she would have married Caspar Goodwood.

Mrs. Touchett appeared at last, just after Isabel had returned to
the big uninhabited drawing-room. She looked a good deal older,
but her eye was as bright as ever and her head as erect; her thin
lips seemed a repository of latent meanings. She wore a little
grey dress of the most undecorated fashion, and Isabel wondered,
as she had wondered the first time, if her remarkable kinswoman
resembled more a queen-regent or the matron of a gaol. Her lips
felt very thin indeed on Isabel's hot cheek.

"I've kept you waiting because I've been sitting with Ralph,"
Mrs. Touchett said. "The nurse had gone to luncheon and I had
taken her place. He has a man who's supposed to look after him,
but the man's good for nothing; he's always looking out