"Well," said Isabel, imperturbably, "I will think of it. This English country and these wonderful old houses, with their inimitable atmosphere, appeal to me very strongly. I have more the feeling of being at home here than I had even in Spain, where I have roots. And socially and picturesquely, there is nothing to compare with the position of an English noblewoman."
Flora turned her eyes frankly to the classic profile beside her. Isabel had removed her hat, and, framed in the heavy coils of her hair, her features impressed the anxious observer as even more Roman than early American; although had she but reflected she would have remembered that the type of the Cæsars had its last stronghold in the United States of the eighteenth century. Isabel looked like a very young Roman matron, but her resemblance to the stately effigies in the galleries of Florence and Rome, strong in virtue or vice, was so striking that once more Flora longed for her support. A woman with such capabilities would be wasted in the rôle of a mere countess—but as the wife of an aspiring Liberal statesman! She devoutly wished that the American had arrived six months earlier, or that Brathland still lived.
But she was a very tactful person and was about to drop the subject, when Isabel slowly turned her eyes. They looked so much like steel that for the moment they seemed to have lost their blue.
"I have made up my mind to do something to prevent this marriage," she announced. "I do not know what, as yet. I shall be guided by events."
And Flora devoutly kissed her, then gossipped pleasantly about the other guests and the people in the neighborhood. Isabel was curious to know something of the duchess she was to meet on the morrow.
"Does she really look like a duchess?" she asked, so innocently that Flora laughed and forgot the Roman-American profile, and the fateful eyes that had given her an uncomfortable sensation a moment before.
"Well—yes—she does—rather. It is the fashion in these days not to—to be smart above all things, excessively democratic, animated, unaffected, clever. But our duchess here is rather old-fashioned, very lofty of head and expression. She has a look of floating from peak to peak, and although passée is still a beauty. To be honest, she is hideously dull, but as good a creature as ever lived, and all that the ideal duchess should be—so high-minded that she has never suspected the larkiest of her friends."
"Well, I am glad she looks the rôle. I have artistic cravings."
They drove for an hour through the beautiful quiet green country, past many old stone villages that might have been the direct sequence of the cave era. An automobile skimmed past and the pony sat down on its haunches. Isabel had a glimpse of a delicate high-bred face set like a panel in a parted curtain.
"That is the duchess," said Miss Thangue. "She wouldn't wear goggles for the world, and only gets into an automobile occasionally to please the duke. There is nothing old-fashioned about him."