I won't say of the future, because I don't believe
much in your future." Poor Ralph had few leading minds among his
acquaintance and rarely enjoyed the pleasure of button-holing a
celebrity; a state of things which appeared to Miss Stackpole to
indicate a deplorable want of enterprise. "If I were on the other side
I should call," she said, "and tell the gentleman, whoever he might
be, that I had heard a great deal about him and had come to see for
myself. But I gather from what you say that this is not the custom
here. You seem to have plenty of meaningless customs, but none of
those that would help along. We are in advance, certainly. I suppose I
shall have to give up the social side altogether"; and Henrietta,
though she went about with her guidebook and pencil and wrote a letter
to the Interviewer about the Tower (in which she described the
execution of Lady Jane Grey), had a sad sense of falling below her
mission.
The incident that had preceded Isabel's departure from Gardencourt
left a painful trace in our young woman's mind: when she felt again in
her face, as from a recurrent wave, the cold breath of her last
suitor's surprise, she could only muffle her head till the air
cleared.
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