She always returned to her theory that a young woman whom after all every one thought clever should begin by getting a general impression of life.
This impression was necessary to prevent mistakes, and after it should be secured she might make the unfortunate condition of others a subject of special attention.
England was a revelation to her, and she found herself as diverted as a child at a pantomime.

In her infantine excursions to Europe she had seen only the Continent, and seen it from the nursery window; Paris, not London, was her father's Mecca, and into many of his interests there his children had naturally not entered.

The images of that time moreover had grown faint and remote, and the old-world quality in everything that she now saw had all the charm of strangeness.

Her uncle's house seemed a picture made real; no refinement of the agreeable was lost upon Isabel; the rich perfection of Gardencourt at once revealed a world and gratified a need.

The large, low rooms, with brown ceilings and dusky corners, the deep embrasures and curious casements, the quiet light on dark, polished panels, the deep greenness outside, that seemed always peeping in, the sense of well-ordered privacy in the centre of a "property"-- a place where sounds were felicitously accidental, where the tread was muffed by the earth itself and in the thick mild air all friction dropped out of contact and all shrillness out of talk--these things were much to the taste of our young lady, whose taste played a considerable part in her emotions.