162 THE POKTRAIT OF A LADY. Mr. Touchett lay silent a long time. Kalph supposed that he had given up the attempt to understand it. But at last he began again " Tell me this first. Doesn't it occur to you that a young lady with sixty thousand pounds may fall a victim to the fortune-hunters 1 " " She will hardly fall a victim to more than one." " Well, one is too many." "Decidedly. That's a risk, and it has entered into my calculation. I think it's appreciable, but I think it's small, and I am prepared to take it." Poor Mr. Touchett's acuteness had passed into perplexity, and his perplexity now passed into admiration. " Well, you have gone into it ! " he exclaimed. " But I don't see what good you are to get of it." Ralph leaned over his father's pillows and gently smoothed them ; he was aware that their conversation had been prolonged to a dangerous point. " I shall get just the good that I said just now I wished to put into Isabel's reach that of having gratified my imagination. But it's scandalous, the way I have taken advantage of you ! " XIX. As Mrs. Touchett had foretold, Isabel and Madame Merle were thrown much together during the illness of their host, and if they had not become intimate it would have been almost a breach of good manners. Their manners were of the best ; but in addition to this they happened to please each other. It is perhaps too much to say that they swore an eternal friendship ; but tacitly, at least, they called the future to witness. Isabel did so with a perfectly good conscience, although she would have hesitated to admit that she was intimate with her new friend in the sense which she privately attached to this terra. She often wondered, indeed, whether she ever had been, or ever could be, intimate with any one. She had an ideal of friend- ship, as well as of several other sentiments, and it did not seem to her in this case it had not seemed to her in other cases that the actual completely expressed it. But she often reminded herself that there were essential reasons why one's ideal could not become concrete. It was a thing to believe in, not to see matter of faith, not of experience. Experience, however
