The two amused themselves, time and again, with talking of the attitude of the British public as if the young lady had been in a position to appeal to it; but in fact the British public remained for the present profoundly indifferent to Miss Isabel Archer, whose fortune had dropped her, as her cousin said, into the dullest house in England.

Her gouty uncle received very little company, and Mrs.Touchett, not having cultivated relations with her husband's neighbours, was not warranted in expecting visits from them.

She had, however, a peculiar taste; she liked to receive cards.

For what is usually called social intercourse she had very little relish; but nothing pleased her more than to find her hall-table whitened with oblong morsels of symbolic pasteboard.

She flattered herself that she was a very just woman, and had mastered the sovereign truth that nothing in this world is got for nothing.