not of their sorrows only, for I've been very happy here as a
child."

"You should go to Florence if you like houses in which things
have happened--especially deaths. I live in an old palace in
which three people have been murdered; three that were known and
I don't know how many more besides."

"In an old palace?" Isabel repeated.

"Yes, my dear; a very different affair from this. This is very
bourgeois."

Isabel felt some emotion, for she had always thought highly of
her grandmother's house. But the emotion was of a kind which led
her to say: "I should like very much to go to Florence."

"Well, if you'll be very good, and do everything I tell you I'll
take you there," Mrs. Touchett declared.

Our young woman's emotion deepened; she flushed a little and
smiled at her aunt in silence. "Do everything you tell me? I
don't think I can promise that."

"No, you don't look like a person of that sort. You're fond of
your own way; but it's not for me to blame you."

"And yet, to go to Florence," the girl exclaimed in a moment,
"I'd promise almost anything!"