"That's as you please. I only meant that it's rather better the announcement should come from you than from me."
"I quite agree with you; it's much more proper!" And on this the aunt and the niece went to breakfast, where Mrs. Touchett, as good as her word, made no allusion to Gilbert Osmond. After an interval of silence,however, she asked her companion from whom she had received a visit an hour before.
"From an old friend—an American gentleman," Isabel said with a colour in her cheek.