It was true that Mrs.
Touchett's conversation had never again appeared so brilliant as
that first afternoon in Albany, when she sat in her damp waterproof
and sketched the opportunities that Europe would offer to a young
person of taste. This, however, was in a great measure the girl's
own fault; she had got a glimpse of her aunt's experience, and her
imagination constantly anticipated the judgements and emotions of a
woman who had very little of the same faculty. Apart from this, Mrs.
Touchett had a great merit; she was as honest as a pair of
compasses. There was a comfort in her stiffness and firmness; you knew
exactly where to find her and were never liable to chance encounters
and concussions. On her own ground she was perfectly present, but
was never over-inquisitive as regards the territory of her
neighbour. Isabel came at last to have a kind of undemonstrable pity
for her; there seemed something so dreary in the condition of a person
whose nature had, as it were, so little surface- offered so limited
a face to the accretions of human contact. Nothing tender, nothing
sympathetic, had ever had a chance to fasten upon it- no wind-sown
blossom, no familiar softening moss.
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