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Shortly after her departure Ralph Touchett was announced, and as soon as he came in Isabel saw he had something on his mind. He very soon took his cousin into his confidence. He had received from his mother a telegram to the effect that his father had had a sharp attack of his old malady, that she was much alarmed and that she begged he would instantly return to Gardencourt.
"Well, dear daddy, don't you understand it now?" his son caressingly asked. "If you don't we won't take any more trouble about it. We'll leave it alone." Mr. Touchett lay a long time still. Ralph supposed he had given up the attempt to follow. But at last, quite lucidly, he began again. "Tell me this first.
Ralph Touchett had praised his cousin for being morally inflammable, that is for being quick to take a hint that was meant as good advice. His advice had perhaps helped the matter; she had at any rate before leaving San Remo grown used to feeling rich.
He made one the last time I was in Rome, and then I thought it my duty to disappear. Now I think it's my duty to stop and defend her." "My dear Touchett, your defensive powers !" Lord Warburton began with a smile. But he saw something in his companion's face that checked him. "Your duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a nice question," he observed instead.
Isabel wrote to Mrs. Touchett to apologise for not presenting herself just yet in Florence, and her aunt replied characteristically enough. Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated, were of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herself never dealt in such articles.
"What do you mean to do with her?" Mrs. Touchett was prompt. "I mean to ask your father to invite her to stay three or four weeks at Gardencourt." "You needn't stand on any such ceremony as that," said Ralph. "My father will ask her as a matter of course." "I don't know about that. She's my niece; she's not his." "Good Lord, dear mother; what a sense of property!
"I find I know it better even than I thought; I've been walking everywhere," Isabel answered. And then she asked if Ralph slept much. "He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn't move. But I'm not sure that it's always sleep." "Will he see me? Can he speak to me?" Mrs. Touchett declined the office of saying. "You can try him," was the limit of her extravagance.
"You're not serious," Miss Stackpole remarked; "that's what's the matter with you." But for all this, in a day or two, she again permitted him to fix her attention and on the later occasion assigned a different cause to her mysterious perversity. "I know what's the matter with you, Mr. Touchett," she said. "You think you're too good to get married."
"Oh, we were received," said the girl. "There were about a dozen servants in the hall. And there was an old woman curtseying at the gate." "We can do better than that if we have notice!" And the old man stood there smiling, rubbing his hands and slowly shaking his head at her. "But Mrs. Touchett doesn't like receptions." "She went straight to her room." "Yes and locked herself in.
Perhaps there was this immediate disadvantage, that hearing of a more intellectual tone of society tended to make Rachel less tolerant of that which surrounded her, and especially of Mr. Touchett.
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