Mrs. Touchett rarely changed her plans, and, having intended
before her husband's death to spend a part of the winter in Paris, saw
no reason to deprive herself- still less to deprive her companion-
of this advantage. Though they would live in great retirement she
might still present her niece, informally, to the little circle of her
fellow countrymen dwelling upon the skirts of the Champs Elysees. With
many of these amiable colonists Mrs. Touchett was intimate; she shared
their expatriation, their convictions, their pastimes, their ennui.
Isabel saw them arrive with a good deal of assiduity at her aunt's
hotel, and pronounced on them with a trenchancy doubtless to be
accounted for by the temporary exaltation of her sense of human
duty. She made up her mind that their lives were, though luxurious,
inane, and incurred some disfavour by expressing this view on bright
Sunday afternoons, when the American absentees were engaged in calling
on each other. Though her listeners passed for people kept exemplarily
genial by their cooks and dressmakers, two or three of them thought
her cleverness, which was generally admitted, inferior to that of
the new theatrical pieces.
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