‘Of course it is. Could there be a better reason?’
‘How will it help you?—that’s what I want to know,’ said Miss Stackpole.
‘That’s just what I can’t tell you. It’s just what I was thinking about in Paris.’
‘It will make you more discontented.’
‘Why do you say “more” so?’ Goodwood asked rather sternly. ‘How do you know I’m discontented?’
‘Well,’ said Henrietta, hesitating a little, ‘you seem never to have cared for another.’
‘How do you know what I care for?’ he cried with a big blush. ‘Just now I care to go to Rome.’
Henrietta looked at him in silence, with a sad yet luminous expression. ‘Well,’ she observed at last, ‘I only wanted to tell you what I think; I had it on my mind. Of course you think it’s none of my business. But nothing is any one’s business, on that principle.’
‘It’s very kind of you; I’m greatly obliged to you for your interest,’ said Caspar Goodwood. ‘I shall go to Rome and I shan’t hurt Mrs Osmond.’
‘You won’t hurt her, perhaps. But will you help her?—that’s the real issue.’
‘Is she in need of help?’ he asked slowly, with a penetrating look.
‘Most women always are,’ said Henrietta, with conscientious evasiveness and generalizing less hopefully than usual. ‘If you go to Rome,’ she added, ‘I hope you’ll be a true friend—not a selfish one!’ And she turned off and began to look at the pictures.
Caspar Goodwood let her go and stood watching her while she wandered round the room; but after a moment he rejoined her. ‘You’ve heard something about her here,’ he then resumed. ‘I should like to know what you’ve heard.’
Henrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and, though on this occasion there might have been a fitness in doing so, she decided, after thinking some minutes, to make no superficial exception. ‘Yes, I’ve heard,’ she answered; ‘but as I don’t want you to go to Rome I won’t tell you.’
‘Just as you please. I shall see for myself,’ he said. Then inconsistently, for him, ‘You’ve heard she’s unhappy!’ he added.
‘Oh, you won’t see that!’ Henrietta exclaimed.
‘I hope not. When do you start?’
‘To-morrow, by the evening train. And you?’
Goodwood hung back; he had no desire to make his journey to Rome in Miss Stackpole’s company. His indifference to this advantage was not of the same character as Gilbert Osmond’s, but it had at this moment an equal distinctness. It was rather a tribute to Miss Stackpole’s virtues than a reference to her faults. He thought her very remarkable, very brilliant, and he had, in theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged. Lady correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of things in a progressive country, and though he never read their letters he supposed that they ministered somehow to social prosperity. But it was this very eminence of their position that made him wish Miss Stackpole didn’t take so much for granted. She took for granted that he was always ready for some allusion to Mrs Osmond; she had done so when they met in Paris, six weeks after his arrival in Europe, and she had repeated the assumption with every successive opportunity. He had not wish whatever to allude to Mrs