120 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. companion, to Miss Stackpole's liigh irritation, that there was not a creature in town. "I suppose you mean that the aristocracy are absent," Hen- rietta answered ; " but I don't think you could have a better proof that if they were absent altogether they would not be missed, t It seems to me the place is about as full as it can be. There is no one here, of course, except three or four millions of people. What is it you call them the lower-middle class 1 They are only the population of London, and that is of no consequence." Ralph declared that for him the aristocracy left no void that Miss Stackpole herself did not till, and that a more contented man was nowhere at that moment to be found. In this he spoke the truth, for the stale September days, in the huge half- empty town, borrowed a charm from his circumstances. When he went home at night to the empty house in Winchester Square, after a day spent with his inquisitive countrywomen, he wandered into the big dusky dining-room, where the candle he took from the hall-table, after letting himself in, constituted the only illumination. The square was still, the house was still ; when he raised one of the windows of the dining-room to let in the air, he heard the slow creak of the boots of a solitary policeman. His own step, in the empty room, seemed loud and sonorous ; some of the carpets had been raised, and whenever he moved he roused a melancholy echo. He sat down in one of the arm- chairs ; the big, dark, dining table twinkled here and there in the small candle-light ; the pictures on the wall, all of them very brown, looked vague and incoherent. There was a ghostly presence in the room, as of dinners long since digested, of table- talk that had lost its actuality. This hint of the supernatural perhaps had something to do with the fact that Ealph's imagin- ation took a flight, and that he remained in his chair a long time beyond the hour at which he should have been in bed ; doing nothing, not even reading the evening paper. I say he did nothing, and I maintain the phrase in the face of the fact that he thought at these moments of Isabel. To think of Isabel could only be for Ralph an idle pursuit, leading to nothing and profiting little to any one. His cousin had not yet seemed to him so charming as during these days spent in sounding, tourist- fashion, the deeps and shallows of the metropolitan element. Isabel was constantly interested and often excited ; if she had come in search of local colour she found it everywhere. She asked more questions than he could answer, and launched little theories that he was equally unable to accept or to refute. The
