‘All I want to. I’ve been here an hour.’
‘I wonder if you’ve seen my Correggio,’ said Henrietta. ‘I came up on purpose to have a look at it.’ She went into the Tribune and he slowly accompanied her.
‘I suppose I’ve seen it, but I didn’t know it was yours. I don’t remember pictures—especially that sort.’ She had pointed out her favourite work, and he asked her if it was about Correggio she wished to talk with him.
‘No,’ said Henrietta, ‘it’s about something less harmonious!’ They had the small, brilliant room, a splendid cabinet of treasures, to themselves; there was only a custode hovering about the Medicean Venus.4 ‘I want you to do me a favour,’ Miss Stackpole went on.
Caspar Goodwood frowned a little, but he expressed no embarrassment at the sense of not looking eager. His face was that of a much older man than our earlier friend. ‘I’m sure it’s something I shan’t like,’ he said rather loudly.
‘No, I don’t think you’ll like it. If you did it would be no favour.’
‘Well, let’s hear it,’ he went on in the tone of a man quite conscious of his patience.
‘You may say there’s no particular reason why you should do me a favour. Indeed I only know of one: the fact that if you’d let me I’d gladly do you one.’ Her soft, exact tone, in which there was no attempt at effect, had an extreme sincerity; and her companion, though he presented rather a hard surface, couldn’t help being touched by it. When he was touched he rarely showed it, however, by the usual signs; he neither blushed, nor looked away, nor looked conscious. He only fixed his attention more directly; he seemed to consider with added firmness. Henrietta continued therefore disinterestedly, without the sense of an advantage. ‘I may say now, indeed—it seems a good time—that if I’ve ever annoyed you (and I think sometimes I have) it’s because I knew I was willing to suffer annoyance for you. I’ve troubled you—doubtless. But I’d take trouble for you.’
Goodwood hesitated. ‘You’re taking trouble now.’
‘Yes, I am—some. I want you to consider whether it’s better on the whole that you should go to Rome.’
‘I thought you were going to say that!’ he answered rather artlessly.
‘You have considered it then?’
‘Of course I have, very carefully. I’ve looked all round it. Otherwise I shouldn’t have come so far as this. That’s what I stayed in Paris two months for. I was thinking it over.’
‘I’m afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it was best because you were so much attracted.’
‘Best for whom, do you mean?’ Goodwood demanded.
‘Well, for yourself first. For Mrs Osmond next.’
‘Oh, it won’t do her any good! I don’t flatter myself that.’
‘Won’t it do her some harm?—that’s the question.’
‘I don’t see what it will matter to her. I’m nothing to Mrs Osmond. But if you want to know, I do want to see her myself.’
‘Yes, and that’s why you go.’