"It isn't in the least that you've
married-it is that you have married him," she had deemed it her duty
to remark; agreeing, it will be seen, much more with Ralph Touchett
than she suspected, though she had few of his hesitations and
compunctions. Henrietta's second visit to Europe, however, was not
apparently to have been made in vain; for just at the moment when
Osmond had declared to Isabel that he really must object to that
newspaper-woman, and Isabel had answered that it seemed to her he took
Henrietta too hard, the good Mr. Bantling had appeared upon the
scene and proposed that they should take a run down to Spain.
Henrietta's letters from Spain had proved the most acceptable she
had yet published, and there had been one in especial, dated from
the Alhambra and entitled "Moors and Moonlight," which generally
passed for her masterpiece. Isabel had been secretly disappointed at
her husband's not seeing his way simply to take the poor girl for
funny. She even wondered if his sense of fun, or of the funny-which
would be his sense of humour, wouldn't it?-were by chance defective.
Of course she herself looked at the matter as a person whose present
happiness had nothing to grudge to Henrietta's violated conscience.
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