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Updated: July 28, 2025
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.
Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of her own intention "My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to Gardencourt." "Why must you go to Gardencourt?" Osmond asked in the tone of impartial curiosity. "To see Ralph before he dies."
Touchett, whose noble tone, as she said, met with her full approval her situation at Gardencourt would have been perfectly comfortable had she not conceived an irresistible mistrust of the little lady for whom she had at first supposed herself obliged to "allow" as mistress of the house. She presently discovered, in truth, that this obligation was of the lightest and that Mrs.
"Heaven forbid!" cried Ralph with ardour. "I mean to try and imitate them," said Isabel. "I want very much to see them at home." She had this pleasure a few days later, when, with Ralph and his mother, she drove over to Lockleigh. Isabel liked them even better at home than she had done at Gardencourt, and was more than ever struck with the fact that they were not morbid.
"But, I nevertheless don't think he'd like me to keep coming to Gardencourt." "I can't answer for my uncle's tastes," the girl rejoined, "though I ought as far as possible to take them into account. But for myself I shall be very glad to see you." "Now that's what I like to hear you say. I'm charmed when you say that." "You're easily charmed, my lord," said Isabel. "No, I'm not easily charmed!"
The two made the journey to Gardencourt in almost unbroken silence, and the servant who met them at the station had no better news to give them of Mr. Touchett a fact which caused Ralph to congratulate himself afresh on Sir Matthew Hope's having promised to come down in the five o'clock train and spend the night. Mrs.
Ralph offered her his arm with the exaggerated alertness of a man who was no longer a lover. Even if this had still been his condition, however, Ralph had other things to think about. The great doctor spent the night at Gardencourt and, returning to London on the morrow, after another consultation with Mr.
"Oh, I see; I dare say you found it very quiet at Gardencourt. Naturally there's not much going on there when there's such a lot of illness about. Touchett's very bad, you know; the doctors have forbidden his being in England at all, and he has only come back to take care of his father. The old man, I believe, has half a dozen things the matter with him.
The girl was pale and grave an effect not mitigated by her deeper mourning; but the smile of her brightest moments came into her face as she saw Madame Merle, who went forward, laid her hand on our heroine's shoulder and, after looking at her a moment, kissed her as if she were returning the kiss she had received from her at Gardencourt.
The idea of seeing more of this interesting woman did much to mitigate Isabel's sense of the sadness now settling on Gardencourt. When she came into the drawing-room before dinner she found the place empty; but in the course of a moment Ralph arrived. His anxiety about his father had been lightened; Sir Matthew Hope's view of his condition was less depressed than his own had been.
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