was a long way from Piccadilly. But Isabel performed the journey
with a positive enjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost
on purpose, in order to get more sensations, so that she was
disappointed when an obliging policeman easily set her right
again. She was so fond of the spectacle of human life that she
enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in the London streets--
the moving crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops, the
flaring stalls, the dark, shining dampness of everything. That
evening, at her hotel, she wrote to Madame Merle that she should
start in a day or two for Rome. She made her way down to Rome
without touching at Florence--having gone first to Venice and
then proceeded southward by Ancona. She accomplished this journey
without other assistance than that of her servant, for her
natural protectors were not now on the ground. Ralph Touchett was
spending the winter at Corfu, and Miss Stackpole, in the
September previous, had been recalled to America by a telegram
from the Interviewer. This journal offered its brilliant
correspondent a fresher field for her genius than the mouldering
cities of Europe, and Henrietta was cheered on her way by a
promise from Mr. Bantling that he would soon come over to see
her. Isabel wrote to Mrs. Touchett to apologise for not
presenting herself just yet in Florence, and her aunt replied
characteristically enough. Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated,
were of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herself never
dealt in such articles. One either did the thing or one didn't,
and what one "would" have done belonged to the sphere of the
irrelevant, like the idea of a future life or of the origin of
things. Her letter was frank, but (a rare case with Mrs.
Touchett) not so frank as it pretended. She easily forgave her
niece for not stopping at Florence, because she took it for a