IT had been arranged that the two young ladies should proceed to London under Ralph's escort, though Mrs. Touchett looked with little favour upon the plan. It was just the sort of plan, she said, that Miss Stackpole would be sure to suggest, and she inquired if the correspondent of the Interviewer was to take the party to stay at a boarding-house.

“I don't care where she takes us to stay, so long as there is local colour,” said Isabel. “That is what we are going to London for.”

“I suppose that after a girl has refused an English lord she may do anything,” her aunt rejoined. “After that one needn't stand on trifles.”

“Should you have liked me to marry Lord Warburton?” Isabel inquired.

“Of course I should.”

“I thought you disliked the English so much.”

“So I do; but it's all the more reason for making use of them.”

“Is that your idea of marriage?” And Isabel ventured to add that her aunt appeared to her to have made very little use of Mr. Touchett.

“Your uncle is not an English nobleman,” said Mrs. Touchett, “though even if he had been, I should still probably have taken up my residence in Florence.”

“Do you think Lord Warburton could make me any better than I am?” the girl asked, with some animation. “I don't mean that I am too good to improve. I mean—I mean that I don't love Lord Warburton enough to marry him.”

“You did right to refuse him, then,” said Mrs. Touchett, in her little spare voice. “Only, the next great offer you get, I hope you will manage to come up to your standard.”

“We had better wait till the offer comes, before we talk about it. I hope very much that I may have no more offers for the present. They bother me fearfully.”

“You probably won't be troubled with them if you adopt permanently the Bohemian manner of life. However, I have promised Ralph not to criticise the affair.”

“I will do whatever Ralph says is right,” Isabel said. “I have unbounded confidence in Ralph.”