His determination had held good; it had kept him going some eighteen months more, till the time of his return to Rome with Lord Warburton.

It had given him indeed such an air of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs.Touchett, though more accessible to confusions of thought in the matter of this strange, unremunerative--and unremunerated--son of hers than she had ever been before, had, as we have learned, not scrupled to embark for a distant land.

If Ralph had been kept alive by suspense it was with a good deal of the same emotion--the excitement of wondering in what state she should find him--that Isabel mounted to his apartment the day after Lord Warburton had notified her of his arrival in Rome.
She spent an hour with him; it was the first of several visits.

Gilbert Osmond called on him punctually, and on their sending their carriage for him Ralph came more than once to Palazzo Roccanera.

A fortnight elapsed, at the end of which Ralph announced to Lord Warburton that he thought after all he wouldn't go to Sicily.