"I've
unbounded confidence in Ralph."
"His mother's much obliged to you!" this lady dryly laughed.
"It seems to me indeed she ought to feel it!" Isabel irrepressibly
answered.
Ralph had assured her that there would be no violation of decency in
their paying a visit- the little party of three- to the sights of
the metropolis; but Mrs. Touchett took a different view. Like many
ladies of her country who had lived a long time in Europe, she had
completely lost her native tact on such points, and in her reaction,
not in itself deplorable, against the liberty allowed to young persons
beyond the seas, had fallen into gratuitous and exaggerated
scruples. Ralph accompanied their visitors to town and established
them at a quiet inn in a street that ran at right angles to
Piccadilly. His first idea had been to take them to his father's house
in Winchester Square, a large, dull mansion which at this period of
the year was shrouded in silence and brown holland; but he bethought
himself that, the cook being at Gardencourt, there was no one in the
house to get them their meals, and Pratt's Hotel accordingly became
their resting-place. Ralph, on his side, found quarters in
Winchester Square, having a "den" there of which he was very fond
and being familiar with deeper fears than that of a cold kitchen.
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