Isabel came back to Florence, but only after several months; an interval¹ sufficiently² replete³ with incident. It is not, however, during this interval that we are closely concerned with her; our attention is engaged again on a certain day in the late spring-time, shortly after her return to Palazzo Crescentini and a year from the date of the incidents just narrated⁴. She was alone on this occasion, in one of the smaller of the numerous rooms devoted⁵ by Mrs. Touchett to social uses, and there was that in her expression and attitude which would have suggested that she was expecting a visitor. The tall window was open, and though its green shutters⁶ were partly drawn⁷ the bright air of the garden had come in through a broad interstice and filled the room with warmth and perfume. Our young woman stood near it for some time, her hands clasped behind her; she gazed abroad with the vagueness of unrest. Too troubled for attention she moved in a vain circle. Yet it could not be in her thought to catch a glimpse of her visitor before he should pass into the house, since the entrance to the palace was not through the garden, in which stillness and privacy always reigned⁸. She wished rather to forestall⁹ his arrival by a process of conjecture¹⁰, and to judge by the expression of her face this attempt gave her plenty to do. Grave she found herself, and positively¹¹ more weighted, as by the experience of the

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