So she simply added after a
moment: "I've come to bid you good-bye. I'm going to England."
Pansy's white little face turned red. "To England! Not to come
back?"
"I don't know when I shall come back."
"Ah, I'm sorry," Pansy breathed with faintness. She spoke as if
she had no right to criticize; but her tone expressed a depth of
disappointment.
"My cousin, Mr. Touchett, is very ill; he'll probably die. I wish to
see him," Isabel said.
"Ah yes; you told me he would die. Of course you must go. And will
papa go?"
"No; I shall go alone."
For a moment the girl said nothing. Isabel had often wondered what
she thought of the apparent relations of her father with his wife; but
never by a glance, by an intimation, had she let it be seen that she
deemed them deficient in an air of intimacy. She made her
reflexions, Isabel was sure; and she must have had a conviction that
there were husbands and wives who were more intimate than that. But
Pansy was not indiscreet even in thought; she would as little have
ventured to judge her gentle stepmother as to criticize her
magnificent father. Her heart may have stood almost as still as it
would have done had she seen two of the saints in the great picture in
the convent-chapel turn their painted heads and shake them at each
other.
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