"The worst? What do you call the worst?"

"Before your character gets spoiled."

"Do you mean my disposition? It won't get spoiled," Isabel
answered, smiling. "I'm taking very good care of it. I'm
extremely struck," she added, turning away, "with the off-hand
way in which you speak of a woman's leaving her husband. It's
easy to see you've never had one!"

"Well," said Henrietta as if she were beginning an argument,
"nothing is more common in our Western cities, and it's to them,
after all, that we must look in the future." Her argument,
however, does not concern this history, which has too many other
threads to unwind. She announced to Ralph Touchett that she was
ready to leave Rome by any train he might designate, and Ralph
immediately pulled himself together for departure. Isabel went to
see him at the last, and he made the same remark that Henrietta
had made. It struck him that Isabel was uncommonly glad to get
rid of them all.

For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said
in a low tone, with a quick smile: "My dear Ralph--!"

It was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he went on
in the same way, jocosely, ingenuously: "I've seen less of you
than I might, but it's better than nothing. And then I've heard a
great deal about you."

"I don't know from whom, leading the life you've done."