"If I believed I could make you unhappy I think I should try it." At this she walked in advance and he also proceeded. "I'll never say a word to displease you."
"Very good. If you do, our friendship's at an end."
"Perhaps some day—after a while—you'll give me leave."
"Give you leave to make me unhappy?"
He hesitated. "To tell you again—" But he checked himself. "I'll keep it down. I'll keep it down always."
Ralph Touchett had been joined in his visit to the excavation by Miss Stackpole and her attendant, and these three now emerged from among the mounds of earth and stone collected round the aperture and came into sight of Isabel and her companion. Poor Ralph hailed his friend with joy qualified by wonder, and Henrietta exclaimed in a high voice "Gracious, there's that lord!" Ralph and his English neighbour greeted with the austerity with which, after long separations,English neighbours greet, and Miss Stackpole rested her large intellectual gaze upon the sunburnt traveller.But she soon established her relation to the crisis. "I don't suppose you remember me, sir."