But Isabel performed the journey with a positive enjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost on purpose, in order to get more sensations, so that she was disappointed when an obliging policeman easily set her right again.

She was so fond of the spectacle of human life that she enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in the London streets--the moving crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops, the flaring stalls, the dark, shining dampness of everything.

That evening, at her hotel, she wrote to Madame Merle that she should start in a day or two for Rome.

She made her way down to Rome without touching at Florence--having gone first to Venice and then proceeded southward by Ancona.

She accomplished this journey without other assistance than that of her servant, for her natural protectors were not now on the ground.
Ralph Touchett was spending the winter at Corfu, and Miss Stackpole, in the September previous, had been recalled to America by a telegram from the Interviewer.