‘I was thinking of you a little,’ said Isabel.
‘A little? I don’t understand. If the knowledge of what I feel for you had any weight with you at all, calling it a “little” is a poor account of it.’
Isabel shook her head as if to carry off a blunder. ‘I’ve refused a most kind, noble gentleman. Make the most of that.’
‘I thank you then,’ said Caspar Goodwood gravely. ‘I thank you immensely.’
‘And now you had better go home.’
‘May I not see you again?’ he asked.
‘I think it’s better not. You’ll be sure to talk of this, and you see it leads to nothing.’
‘I promise you not to say a word that will annoy you.’
Isabel reflected and then answered: ‘I return in a day or two to my uncle’s, and I can’t propose to you to come there. It would be too inconsistent.’
Caspar Goodwood, on his side, considered. ‘You must do me justice too. I received an invitation to your uncle’s more than a week ago, and I declined it.’
She betrayed surprise. ‘From whom was your invitation?’
‘From Mr Ralph Touchett, whom I suppose to be your cousin. I declined it because I had not your authorization to accept it. The suggestion that Mr Touchett should invite me appeared to have come from Miss Stackpole.’
‘It certainly never did from me. Henrietta really goes very far,’ Isabel added.
‘Don’t be too hard on her—that touches me.’
‘No; if you declined you did quite right, and I thank you for it.’ And she gave a little shudder of dismay at the thought that Lord Warburton and Mr Goodwood might have met at Gardencourt: it would have been so awkward for Lord Warburton.
‘When you leave your uncle where do you go?’ her companion asked.
‘I go abroad with my aunt—to Florence and other places.’
The serenity of this announcement struck a chill to the young man’s heart; he seemed to see her whirled away into circles from which he was inexorably excluded. Nevertheless he went on quickly with his questions. ‘And when shall you come back to America?’
‘Perhaps not for a long time. I’m very happy here.’
‘Do you mean to give up your country?’
‘Don’t be an infant!’
‘Well, you’ll be out of my sight indeed!’ said Caspar Goodwood.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered rather grandly. ‘The world—with all these places so arranged and so touching each other—comes to strike one as rather small.’