"As soon as you can, I hope. I'm only a little girl," said Pansy,
"but I shall always expect you." And the small figure stood in
the high, dark doorway, watching Isabel cross the clear, grey
court and disappear into the brightness beyond the big portone,
which gave a wider dazzle as it opened.



CHAPTER XXXI

Isabel came back to Florence, but only after several months; an
interval sufficiently replete with incident. It is not, however,
during this interval that we are closely concerned with her; our
attention is engaged again on a certain day in the late
spring-time, shortly after her return to Palazzo Crescentini and
a year from the date of the incidents just narrated. She was
alone on this occasion, in one of the smaller of the numerous
rooms devoted by Mrs. Touchett to social uses, and there was that
in her expression and attitude which would have suggested that
she was expecting a visitor. The tall window was open, and though
its green shutters were partly drawn the bright air of the garden
had come in through a broad interstice and filled the room with
warmth and perfume. Our young woman stood near it for some time,
her hands clasped behind her; she gazed abroad with the vagueness
of unrest. Too troubled for attention she moved in a vain circle.
Yet it could not be in her thought to catch a glimpse of her
visitor before he should pass into the house, since the entrance
to the palace was not through the garden, in which stillness and
privacy always reigned. She wished rather to forestall his arrival