"I've but just
arrived. Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I've lost
no time in coming to pay you my respects. I knew you were at home on
Thursdays."

"You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England," Osmond
remarked to his wife.

"It's very kind of Lord Warburton to come so soon; we're greatly
flattered," Isabel said.

"Ah well, it's better than stopping in one of those horrible inns,"
Osmond went on.

"The hotel seems very good; I think it's the same at which I saw you
four years since. You know it was here in Rome that we first met; it's a
long time ago. Do you remember where I bade you good-bye?" his lordship
asked of his hostess. "It was in the Capitol, in the first room."

"I remember that myself," said Osmond. "I was there at the time."

"Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Rome--so sorry
that, somehow or other, it became almost a dismal memory, and I've never
cared to come back till to-day. But I knew you were living here," her
old friend went on to Isabel, "and I assure you I've often thought of
you. It must be a charming place to live in," he added with a look,
round him, at her established home, in which she might have caught the
dim ghost of his old ruefulness.

"We should have been glad to see you at any time," Osmond observed with
propriety.

"Thank you very much. I haven't been out of England since then. Till a
month ago I really supposed my travels over."

"I've heard of you from time to time," said Isabel, who had already,
with her rare capacity for such inward feats, taken the measure of what
meeting him again meant for her.

"I hope you've heard no harm. My life has been a remarkably complete
blank."

"Like the good reigns in history," Osmond suggested. He appeared to
think his duties as a host now terminated--he had performed them so
conscientiously. Nothing could have been more adequate, more
nicely measured, than his courtesy to his wife's old friend. It
was punctilious, it was explicit, it was everything but natural--a
deficiency which Lord Warburton, who, himself, had on the whole a good
deal of nature, may be supposed to have perceived. "I'll leave you and
Mrs. Osmond together," he added. "You have reminiscences into which I
don't enter."

"I'm afraid you lose a good deal!" Lord Warburton called after him, as
he moved away, in a tone which perhaps betrayed overmuch an appreciation
of his generosity. Then the visitor turned on Isabel the