Osmond had thought their alliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn't
imagine what they had in common. For him, Mr. Bantling's fellow
tourist was simply the most vulgar of women, and he had also
pronounced her the most abandoned. Against this latter clause of the
verdict Isabel had appealed with an ardour that had made him wonder
afresh at the oddity of some of his wife's tastes. Isabel could
explain it only by saying that she liked to know people who were as
different as possible from herself. "Why then don't you make the
acquaintance of your washerwoman?" Osmond had enquired; to which
Isabel had answered that she was afraid her washerwoman wouldn't
care for her. Now Henrietta cared so much.
Ralph had seen nothing of her for the greater part of the two
years that had followed her marriage; the winter that formed the
beginning of her residence in Rome he had spent again at San Remo,
where he had been joined in the spring by his mother, who afterwards
had gone with him to England, to see what they were doing at the
bank-an operation she couldn't induce him to perform. Ralph had
taken a lease of his house at San Remo, a small villa which he had
occupied still another winter; but late in the month of April of
this second year he had come down to Rome.
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