THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 103 intensely real. What I wish, to tell you is that I find her fearfully changed." " Since you came, do you mean 1 " " Since I came, and "before I came. She is not the same as ehe was." " As 'she was in America 1 " " Yes, in America. I suppose you know that she comes from there. She can't help it, but she does." " Do you want to change her back again 1 " " Of course I do ; and I want you to help me." " Ah," said Ralph, " I am only Caliban ; I am not Prospero." " You were Prospero enough to make her what she has become. You have acted on Isabel Archer since she came here, Mr. Touchett." " I, my dear Miss Stackpole 1 Never in the world. Isabel Archer has acted on me yes; she acts on every one. But I have been absolutely passive." " You are too passive, then. You had better stir yourself and be careful. Isabel is changing every day ; she is drifting away right out to sea. I have watched her and I can see it. She is not the bright American girl she was. She is taking different views, and turning away from her old ideals. I want to save those ideals, Mr. Touchett, and that is where you come in." " Not surely as an ideal 1 " " Well, I hope not," Henrietta replied, promptly. " I have got a fear in my heart .that she is going to marry one of these Europeans, and I want to prevent it." " Ah, I see," cried Ralph ; " and to prevent it, you want me to step in and marry her 1 " " Not quite ; that remedy would be as bad as the disease, for- you are the typical European from whom I wish to rescue her. No ; I wish you to take an interest in another person a young man to whom she once gave great encouragement, and whom she now doesn't seem to think good enough. He's a noble fellow, and a very dear friend of mine, and I wish very much you would invite him to pay a visit here." Ralph was much puzzled by this appeal, and it is perhaps not to the credit of his purity of mind that he failed to look at it at first in the simplest light. It wore, to bis eyes, a tortuous air, and his fault was that he was not quite sure that anything in the world could really be as candid as this request of Miss Stack- pole's appeared. That a young woman should demand that a gen tie m an whom she described as her very dear friend should be furnished with an opportunity to make himself agreeable to
