118 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. Isabel hesitated an instant. " Relations 1 They are hardly relations. That is the strange part of it ; he has seen me but three or four times." " Why did you tell your uncle rather than me 1 " Mrs. Touchett inquired, dryly, but dispassionately. Again Isabel hesitated. " Because he knows Lord Warburton better." " Yes, but I know you better." " I am not sure of that," said Isabel, smiling. " Neither am I, after all ; especially when you smile that way. One would think you had carried off a prize ! I suppose that when you refuse an offer like Lord Warburton's it's because you expect to do something better." "Ah,- my uncle didn't say that I" cried Isabel, smiling still. XV. IT had been arranged that the two young ladies should proceed to London under Ralph's escort, though Mrs. Touchett looked with little favour upon the plan. It was just the sort of plan, she said, that Miss Stackpole would be sure to suggest, and she inquired if the correspondent of the Interviewer was to take the party to stay at a boarding-house. " I don't care where she takes us to stay, so long as there is local colour," said Isabel. "That is what we are -going to London for." " I suppose that after a girl has refused an English lord she may do anything," her aunt rejoined. " After that one needn't stand on trifles." "Should you have liked me to marry Lord Warburton V Isabel inquired. " Of course I should." . " I thought you disliked the English so much." " So I do; but -it's all the more reason for making use of them." " Is that your idea of marriage *? " And Isabel ventured to add that her aunt appeared to her to have made very little use of Mr. Touchett. " Your uncle is not an English nobleman," said Mrs. Touchett, " though even if he had been, I should still probably have taken up my residence in Florence." "Do you think Lord Warburton could make me any better
