“You’d like to be the Pope?” said Isabel.
“I should love it—but I should have gone in for it earlier. But why”—Osmond reverted—“do you speak of your friend as poor?”
“Women—when they are very, very good sometimes pity men after they’ve hurt them; that’s their great way of showing kindness,” said Ralph, joining in the conversation for the first time and with a cynicism so transparently ingenious as to be virtually innocent.
“Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?” Isabel asked, raising her eyebrows as if the idea were perfectly fresh.
“It serves him right if you have,” said Henrietta while the curtain rose for the ballet.
Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next twenty-four hours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she encountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he stood before the lion of the collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come in with her companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert Osmond had his place, and the party, having ascended the staircase, entered the first and finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her alertly enough, but said in a moment that he was leaving the gallery. “And I’m leaving Rome,” he added. “I must bid you goodbye.” Isabel, inconsequently enough, was now sorry to hear it. This was perhaps because she had ceased to be afraid of his renewing his suit; she was thinking of something else. She was on the point of naming her regret, but she checked herself and simply wished him a happy journey; which made him look at her rather unlightedly. “I’m afraid you’ll think me very ‘volatile.’ I told you the other day I wanted so much to stop.”
“Oh no; you could easily change your mind.”
“That’s what I have done.”
“Bon voyage then.”
“You’re in a great hurry to get rid of me,” said his lordship quite dismally.
“Not in the least. But I hate partings.”
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