She performed all those acts of mental prostration in which, on a first visit to Italy, youth and enthusiasm so freely indulge; she felt her heart beat in the presence of immortal genius and knew the sweetness of rising tears in eyes to which faded fresco and darkened marble grew dim.

But the return, every day, was even pleasanter than the going forth; the return into the wide, monumental court of the great house in which Mrs.
Touchett, many years before, had established herself, and into the high, cool rooms where the carven rafters and pompous frescoes of the sixteenth century looked down on the familiar commodities of the age of advertisement.

Mrs.Touchett inhabited an historic building in a narrow street whose very name recalled the strife of medieval factions; and found compensation for the darkness of her frontage in the modicity of her rent and the brightness of a garden where nature itself looked as archaic as the rugged architecture of the palace and which cleared and scented the rooms in regular use.

To live in such a place was, for Isabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past.

This vague eternal rumour kept her imagination awake.
Gilbert Osmond came to see Madame Merle, who presented him to the young lady lurking at the other side of the room.