cried. "He's an American gentleman truly."

"He is indeed," said Isabel, thinking with perverse admiration of
what Caspar Goodwood had done for her.

Two days afterward Ralph arrived; but though Isabel was sure that
Mrs. Touchett had lost no time in imparting to him the great fact,
he showed at first no open knowledge of it. Their prompted talk
was naturally of his health; Isabel had many questions to ask
about Corfu. She had been shocked by his appearance when he came
into the room; she had forgotten how ill he looked. In spite of
Corfu he looked very ill to-day, and she wondered if he were
really worse or if she were simply disaccustomed to living with
an invalid. Poor Ralph made no nearer approach to conventional
beauty as he advanced in life, and the now apparently complete
loss of his health had done little to mitigate the natural oddity
of his person. Blighted and battered, but still responsive and
still ironic, his face was like a lighted lantern patched with
paper and unsteadily held; his thin whisker languished upon a
lean cheek; the exorbitant curve of his nose defined itself more
sharply. Lean he was altogether, lean and long and loose-jointed;
an accidental cohesion of relaxed angles. His brown velvet jacket
had become perennial; his hands had fixed themselves in his
pockets; he shambled and stumbled and shuffled in a manner that
denoted great physical helplessness. It was perhaps this
whimsical gait that helped to mark his character more than ever
as that of the humorous invalid--the invalid for whom even his
own disabilities are part of the general joke. They might well
indeed with Ralph have been the chief cause of the want of
seriousness marking his view of a world in which the reason for