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"There's something in that. Who then is your friend?" "The person I came to Florence to see. She's a niece of Mrs. Touchett, whom you'll not have forgotten." "A niece? The word niece suggests youth and ignorance. I see what you're coming to." "Yes, she's young twenty-three years old. She's a great friend of mine.
Madame Merle recovered herself; she had a chance to express sympathy. "Do you go alone?" "Yes; without my husband." Madame Merle gave a low vague murmur; a sort of recognition of the general sadness of things. "Mr. Touchett never liked me, but I'm sorry he's dying. Shall you see his mother?" "Yes; she has returned from America." "She used to be very kind to me; but she has changed.
Madame Merle had predicted to Mrs. Touchett that after their young friend had put her hand into her pocket half a dozen times she would be reconciled to the idea that it had been filled by a munificent uncle; and the event justified, as it had so often justified before, that lady's perspicacity.
"Ah my dear," she said, "you, who are so literary, do tell me some amusing book to read! Everything here's of a dreariness ! Do you think this would do me any good?" Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but without reading or understanding it. "I'm afraid I can't advise you. I've had bad news. My cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying." The Countess threw down her book.
Her eyes were on their visitor's face, where they were the more free to rest that those of his lordship carefully avoided them. Yet Isabel was sure that had she met his glance she would have found it expressive. "You had better take poor Touchett with you," she heard her husband say, lightly enough, in a moment. "He had better wait for warmer weather," Lord Warburton answered.
There should be no marked holding off. He took his way to the upper regions and on the staircase met Ralph Touchett slowly descending, his hat at the inclination of ennui and his hands where they usually were. "I saw you below a moment since and was going down to you. I feel lonely and want company," was Ralph's greeting. "You've some that's very good which you've yet deserted."
Touchett had become wonderfully pacific and obliging of late, as if the lawn tactics absorbed his propensities for offence and defence, he really seemed obliged for one or two bits of parish work that she attended to; finding that between him and his staff of young ladies they were getting omitted.
Daniel Touchett, to his perception, was a man of genius, and though he himself had no aptitude for the banking mystery he made a point of learning enough of it to measure the great figure his father had played. It was not this, however, he mainly relished; it was the fine ivory surface, polished as by the English air, that the old man had opposed to possibilities of penetration.
But the men, the Americans; je vous demande un peu, what do they make of it over here? I don't envy them trying to arrange themselves. Look at poor Ralph Touchett: what sort of a figure do you call that? Fortunately he has a consumption; I say fortunately, because it gives him something to do. His consumption's his carriere it's a kind of position. You can say: 'Oh, Mr.
Touchett cared very little how Miss Stackpole behaved. Mrs.
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