"And yet, to go to Florence," the girl exclaimed in a moment, "I＇d promise almost anything!"
Edmund and Lilian were slow to return, and Mrs.Touchett had an hour＇s uninterrupted talk with her niece, who found her a strange and interesting 昀gure:a 昀gure essentially—almost the 昀rst she had ever met.She was as eccentric as Isabel had always supposed;and hitherto, whenever the girl had heard people described as eccentric, she had thought of them as offensive or alarming. The term had always suggested to her something grotesque and even sinister. But her aunt made it a matter of high but easy irony, or comedy, and led her to ask herself if the common tone, which was all she had known, had ever been as interesting. No one certainly had on any occasion so held her as this little thin-lipped, bright-eyed,foreign-looking woman, who retrieved an insigni昀cant appearance by a distinguished manner and, sitting there in a well-worn waterproof, talked with striking familiarity of the courts of Europe. There was nothing flighty about Mrs. Touchett, but she recognised no social superiors, and, judging the great ones of the earth in a way that spoke of this, enjoyed the consciousness of making an impression on a candid and susceptible mind. Isabel at first had answered a good many questions, and it was from her answers apparently that Mrs. Touchett derived a high opinion of her intelligence. But after this she had asked a good many, and her aunt＇s answers, whatever turn they took,struck her as food for deep reflexion. Mrs. Touchett waited for the return of her other niece as long as she thought reasonable, but as at six o＇clock Mrs. Ludlow had not come in she prepared to take her departure.