I say he did nothing, and I maintain the phrase in
the face of the fact that he thought at these moments of Isabel. To
think of Isabel could only be for him an idle pursuit, leading to
nothing and profiting little to any one. His cousin had not yet seemed
to him so charming as during these days spent in sounding,
tourist-fashion, the deeps and shallows of the metropolitan element.
Isabel was full of premises, conclusions, emotions; if she had come in
search of local colour she found it everywhere. She asked more
questions than he could answer, and launched brave theories, as to
historic cause and social effect, that he was equally unable to accept
or to refute. The party went more than once to the British Museum
and to that brighter palace of art which reclaims for antique
variety so large an area of a monotonous suburb; they spent a
morning in the Abbey and went on a penny-steamer to the Tower; they
looked at pictures both in public and private collections and sat on
various occasions beneath the great trees in Kensington Gardens.
Henrietta proved an indestructible sight-seer and a more lenient judge
than Ralph had ventured to hope.
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