THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 305 thinking of the things she said, he was for the rest simply- accommodating himself to the weight of his total impression the impression of her ^passionate good faith. She was wrong, but she believed; she was deluded, but she was consistent. It was wonderfully characteristic of her that she had invented a fine theory about Gilbert Osmond, and loved him, not for what he really possessed, but for his very poverties dressed out as honours. Ralph remembered what he had said to his father about wishing to put it into Isabel's power to gratify her imagin- ation. He had done so, and the girl had taken full advantage of the privilege. Poor Ralph felt sick ; he felt ashamed. Isabel had uttered her last words with a low solemnity of conviction which virtually terminated the discussion, and she closed it formally by turning away and walking back to the house. Ralph walked beside her. and they passed into the court to- gether and reached the big staircase. Here Ralph stopped, and Isabel paused, turning on him a face full of a deep elation at his opposition having made her own conception of her conduct more clear to her. " Shall you not come up to breakfast 1 " she asked. " No ; I want no breakfast, I am not hungry." " You ought to eat," said the girl ; "you live on air." " I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and take another mouthful of it. I came thus far simply to say this. I said to you last year that if you were to get into trouble I should feel terribly sold. That's how I feel to-day." " Do you think I am in trouble ] " " One is in trouble when one is in error." "Very well," said Isabel; "I shall never complain of my trouble to you ! " And she moved up the staircase. Ralph, standing there with his hands in his pockets, followed her with his eyes ; then the lurking chill of the high-walled court struck him and made him shiver, so that he returned to the garden, to breakfast on the Florentine sunshine. XXXY. ISABEL, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt no impulse to tell him that he was not thought well of at the Palazzo Crescentini. The discreet opposition offered to her marriage by her aunt and her cousin made on the whole little impression upon her ; the moral of it was simply that they x
