For him, Mr.Bantling's fellow tourist was simply the most vulgar of women, and he had also pronounced her the most abandoned.
Against this latter clause of the verdict Isabel had appealed with an ardour that had made him wonder afresh at the oddity of some of his wife's tastes.

Isabel could explain it only by saying that she liked to know people who were as different as possible from herself.

"Why then don't you make the acquaintance of your washerwoman ?" Osmond had enquired; to which Isabel had answered that she was afraid her washerwoman wouldn't care for her.

Now Henrietta cared so much.
Ralph had seen nothing of her for the greater part of the two years that had followed her marriage; the winter that formed the beginning of her residence in Rome he had spent again at San Remo, where he had been joined in the spring by his mother, who afterwards had gone with him to England, to see what they were doing at the bank--an operation she couldn't induce him to perform.

Ralph had taken a lease of his house at San Remo, a small villa which he had occupied still another winter; but late in the month of April of this second year he had come down to Rome.
It was the first time since her marriage that he had stood face to face with Isabel; his desire to see her again was then of the keenest.