She had decided that it was
his love of conversation; his conversation had been better than
ever. He had given up walking; he was no longer a humorous stroller.
He sat all day in a chair-almost any chair would serve, and was so
dependent on what you would do for him that, had not his talk been
highly contemplative, you might have thought he was blind. The
reader already knows more about him than Isabel was ever to know,
and the reader may therefore be given the key to the mystery. What
kept Ralph alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen enough
of the person in the world in whom he was most interested: he was
not yet satisfied. There was more to come; he couldn't make up his
mind to lose that. He wanted to see what she would make of her
husband-or what her husband would make of her. This was only the first
act of the drama, and he was determined to sit out the performance.
His determination had held good; it had kept him going some eighteen
months more, till the time of his return to Rome with Lord
Warburton. It had given him indeed such an air of intending to live
indefinitely that Mrs. Touchett, though more accessible to
confusions of thought in the matter of this strange, unremunerative-
and unremunerated- son of hers than she had ever been before, had,
as we have learned, not scrupled to embark for a distant land.
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