‘How can that be, when I’m in love with Another?’

‘You’re in love with yourself, that’s the Other!’ Miss Stackpole declared. ‘Much good may it do you! But if you wish to be serious once in your life here’s a chance; and if you really care for your cousin here’s an opportunity to prove it. I don’t expect you to understand her; that’s too much to ask. But you needn’t do that to grant my favour. I’ll supply the necessary intelligence.’

‘I shall enjoy that immensely!’ Ralph exclaimed. ‘I’ll be Caliban and you shall be Ariel.’

‘You’re not at all like Caliban, because you’re sophisticated, and Caliban was not. But I’m not talking about imaginary characters; I’m talking about Isabel. Isabel’s intensely real. What I wish to tell you is that I find her fearfully changed.’

‘Since you came, do you mean?’

‘Since I came and before I came. She’s not the same as she once so beautifully was.’

‘As she was in America?’

‘Yes, in America. I suppose you know she comes from there. She can’t help it, but she does.’

‘Do you want to change her back again?’

‘Of course I do, and I want you to help me.’

‘Ah,’ said Ralph, ‘I’m only Caliban; I’m not Prospero.’

‘You were Prospero enough to make her what she has become. You’ve acted on Isabel Archer since she came here, Mr Touchett.’

‘I, my dear Miss Stackpole? Never in the world. Isabel Archer has acted on me—yes; she acts on every one. But I’ve been absolutely passive.’

‘You’re too passive then. You had better stir yourself and be careful. Isabel’s changing every day; she’s drifting away—right out to sea. I’ve watched her and I can see it. She’s not the bright American girl she was. She’s taking different views, a different colour, and turning away from her old ideals. I want to save those ideals, Mr Touchett, and that’s where you come in.’

‘Not surely as an ideal?’

‘Well, I hope not,’ Henrietta replied promptly. ‘I’ve got a fear in my heart that she’s going to marry one of these fell Europeans, and I want to prevent it.’

‘Ah, I see,’ cried Ralph; ‘and to prevent it you want me to step in and marry her?’

‘Not quite; that remedy would be as bad as the disease, for you’re the typical, the fell European from whom I wish to rescue her. No; I wish you to take an interest in another person—a young man to whom she once gave great encouragement and whom she now doesn’t seem to think good enough. He’s a thoroughly grand man and a very dear friend of mine, and I wish very much you would invite him to pay a visit here.’

Ralph was much puzzled by this appeal, and it is perhaps not to the credit of his purity of mind that he failed to look at it at first in the simplest light. It wore, to his eyes, a tortuous air, and his fault was that he was not quite sure that anything in the world could really be as candid as this request of Miss Stackpole’s appeared. That a young woman should demand that a gentleman whom she described as her very dear friend should be furnished with an opportunity to make himself agreeable to another