XIII
His first consciousness after his companion had opened it was of his proximity to the stage, on which the curtain had now again risen. The play was in progress, the actors’ voices came straight into the box, and it was impossible to speak without disturbing them. This at least was his inference from the noiseless way his conductor drew him in and, without announcing or introducing him, simply pointed to a chair and whispered: “Just drop into that; you’ll see and hear beautifully.” He heard the door close behind him and became aware that Captain Sholto had already retreated. Millicent would at any rate not be left long to languish in solitude. Two ladies were seated in the front of the box, which was so large that there was a considerable space between them; and as he stood there, where Captain Sholto had planted him—they appeared not to have noticed the opening of the door—they turned their heads and looked at him. The one on whom his eyes first rested was the odd party he had already viewed at a distance; she looked queerer still on a closer view and gave him a little friendly gratified nod. The other was partly overshadowed by the curtain of the box, drawn forward with the intention of shielding her from the observation of the house; she had still the air of youth, and the simplest way to express the instant effect upon Hyacinth of her fair face of welcome is to say that she dazzled him. He remained as Sholto had left him, staring rather confusedly and not moving an inch; whereupon the younger lady put out her hand—it was her left, the other rested on the ledge of the box—with the expectation, as he perceived, to his extreme mortification, too late, that he would give her his own. She converted the gesture into a sign of invitation and beckoned him silently but graciously to move his chair forward. He did so and seated himself between the two; then for ten minutes he stared straight before him at the stage, not turning his eyes sufficiently even to glance up at Millicent in the balcony. He looked at the play, but was far from seeing it; he had no sense of anything but the woman who sat there, close to him, on his right, with a fragrance in her garments and a light about her which he seemed to see even while his head was averted. The vision had been only of a moment, but it hung before him, threw a vague white mist over the proceedings on the stage. He was consciously embarrassed, overturned and bewildered; he made a great effort to collect himself, to consider the situation lucidly. He wondered if he ought to speak, to look at her again, to behave differently in some way; if she would take him for a clown, for an idiot; if she were really as beautiful as she had seemed or it were only a superficial glamour which a renewed inspection would dissipate. While he so pondered the minutes lapsed and neither of his hostesses spoke; they watched the play in perfect stillness, so that he divined this to be the proper thing and that he himself must remain dumb until a word should be addressed him. Little by little he recovered himself, took possession of his predicament and at last transferred his eyes to the Princess. She immediately perceived this and returned his glance with a bright benevolence. She might well be a princess—it was impossible to conform more to the finest evocations of that romantic word. She was fair, shining, slender, with an effortless majesty. Her beauty had an air of perfection; it astonished and lifted one up, the sight of it seemed a privilege, a reward. If the first impression it had given Hyacinth was to make him feel strangely transported he need still not have set that down to his simplicity, for this was the effect the Princess Casamassima produced on persons of a wider experience and greater pretensions. Her dark eyes, blue or grey, something that was not brown, were as kind as they were splendid, and there was an extraordinary light nobleness in the way she held her head. That head, where two or three diamond stars glittered in the thick, delicate hair which defined its shape, suggested to Hyacinth something antique and celebrated, something he had admired of old—the memory was vague—in a statue, in a picture, in a museum. Purity of line and form, of cheek and chin and lip and brow, a colour that seemed to live and glow, a radiance of grace and eminence and success—these things were seated in triumph in the face of the Princess, and her visitor, as he held himself in his chair trembling with the revelation, questioned if she were really of the same substance with the humanity he had hitherto known. She might be divine, but he could see she understood human needs—that she wished him to be at his ease and happy; there was something familiar in her benignity, as if she had seen him many times before. Her dress was dark and rich; she had pearls round her neck and an old rococo fan in her hand. He took in all these things and finally said to himself that if she wanted nothing more of him he was content, he would like it to go on; so pleasant was it to be enthroned with fine ladies in a dusky, spacious receptacle which framed the bright picture of the stage and made one’s own situation seem a play within the play. The act was a long one, and the repose in which his companions left him might have been a calculated charity, to enable him to get used to them, to see how harmless they were. He looked at Millicent in the course of time and saw that Captain Sholto, seated beside her, had not the same standard of propriety, inasmuch as he made a remark to her every few minutes. Like himself the young lady in the balcony was losing the play, thanks to her so keeping her eyes on her friend from Lomax Place, whose position she thus endeavoured to gauge. He had quite given up the Paraguayan complications; by the end of the half-hour his attention might have come back to them had he not then been engaged in wondering what the Princess would say to him after the descent of the curtain—or if she would say anything. The consideration of this problem as the moment of the solution drew nearer made his heart again beat fast. He watched the old lady on his left and supposed it was natural a princess should have an attendant—he took for granted she was an attendant—as different as possible from herself. This ancient dame was without majesty or grace; huddled together with her hands folded on her stomach and her lips protruding, she solemnly followed the performance. Several times, however, she turned her head to Hyacinth, and then her expression changed; she repeated the jovial, encouraging, almost motherly nod with which she had greeted him on his making his bow and by which she appeared to wish to intimate that, better than the serene beauty on the other side, she could enter into the full anomaly of his situation. She seemed to argue that he must keep his head and that if the worst should come to the worst she was there to look after him. Even when at last the curtain descended it was some moments before the Princess spoke, though she rested her smile on her guest as if she were considering what he would best like her to say. He might at that instant have guessed what he discovered later—that among this lady’s faults (he was destined to learn they were numerous) not the least eminent was an exaggerated fear of the commonplace. He expected she would make some remark about the play, but what she said was, very gently and kindly, “I like to know all sorts of people.”
“I shouldn’t think you’d find the least difficulty in that,” Hyacinth replied.
“Oh, if one wants anything very much it’s sure to be difficult. Every one isn’t so obliging as you.”
Hyacinth could think immediately of no proper answer to this, but the old lady saved him the trouble by declaring with a foreign accent: “I think you were most extraordinarily good-natured. I had no idea you’d come—to two strange women.”
“Yes, we’re strange women,” said the Princess musingly.
“It’s not true she finds things difficult; she makes every one do everything,” her companion went on.
The Princess glanced at her and then remarked to Hyacinth: “Her name is Madame Grandoni.” The tone was not familiar, but there was a happy shade in it, as if he had really taken so much trouble for them that it was but just he should be entertained a little at their expense. It seemed to imply also that Madame Grandoni’s fitness for supplying such entertainment was obvious.
“But I’m not Italian—ah no!” the old lady cried. “In spite of my name I’m an honest, ugly, unfortunate German. But cela n’a pas d’importance. She also, with such a name, isn’t Italian either. It’s an accident; the world’s full of accidents. But she isn’t German, poor lady, any more.” Madame Grandoni appeared to have entered into the Princess’s view, and Hyacinth thought her exceedingly droll. In a moment she added: “That was a very charming person you were with.”
“Yes, she’s very charming,” Hyacinth replied, not sorry to have a chance to say it.
The Princess made no remark on this subject, and Hyacinth saw not only that from her position in the box she could have had no glimpse of Millicent, but that she would never take up such an allusion as that. It was as if she had not heard it that she asked: “Do you find the play very interesting?”
He hesitated, then told the simple truth. “I must confess I’ve lost the whole of this last act.”
“Ah, poor bothered young man!” cried Madame Grandoni. “You see—you see!”
“What do I see?” the Princess inquired. “If you’re annoyed at being here now you’ll like us later; probably at least. We take a great interest in the things you care for. We take a great interest in the people,” the Princess went on.
“Oh, allow me, allow me, and speak only for yourself!” the elder lady interposed. “I take no interest whatever in the people; I don’t understand them and I know nothing about them. An honourable nature, of any class, I always respect; but I won’t pretend to a passion for the ignorant masses, because I have it not. Moreover that doesn’t touch the gentleman.”
The Princess Casamassima had a clear faculty of completely ignoring things of which she wished to take no account; it was not in the least the air of contempt, but thoughtful, tranquil, convenient absence, after which she came back to the point where she wished to be. She made no protest against her companion’s speech, but said to Hyacinth, as if vaguely conscious she had been committing herself in some absurd way: “She lives with me; she’s everything to me; she’s the best woman in the world.”
“Yes, fortunately, with many superficial defects I’m as good as good bread,” Madame Grandoni conceded.
Hyacinth was by this time less embarrassed than when he had presented himself, but he was not less mystified; he wondered afresh if he were not being practised on for some inconceivable end: so strangely did it strike him that two such products of another world than his own should of their own movement take the trouble to explain each other to a dire little bookbinder. This idea made him flush; it might have come over him that he had fallen into a trap. He was conscious he looked frightened, and he was conscious the moment afterwards that the Princess noticed it. This was apparently what made her say: “If you’ve lost so much of the play I ought to tell you what has happened.”
“Do you think he would follow that any more?” Madame Grandoni asked.
“If you would tell me—if you would tell me—!” And then Hyacinth stopped. He had been going to say “If you would tell me what all this means and what you want of me it would be more to the point!” but the words died on his lips and he sat staring, for the woman at his right hand was simply too beautiful. She was too beautiful to question, to judge by common logic; and how could he know, moreover, what was natural to a person in that exaltation of grace and splendour? Perhaps it was her habit to send out every evening for some witless stranger to amuse her; perhaps that was the way the foreign aristocracy lived. There was no sharpness in her face—for the present hour at least: there was nothing but luminous charity, yet she looked as if she knew what was going on in his mind. She made no eager attempt to reassure him, but there was a world almost of direct tenderness in the tone in which she said: “Do you know I’m afraid I’ve already forgotten what they have been doing—? It’s terribly complicated; some one or other was hurled over a precipice.”
“Ah, you’re a brilliant pair,” Madame Grandoni declared with a laugh of long experience. “I could describe everything. The person who was hurled over the precipice was the virtuous hero, and you’ll see him in the next act all the better for it.”
“Don’t describe anything; I’ve so much to ask.” Hyacinth had looked away in tacit deprecation at hearing himself “paired” with the Princess, and he felt she was watching him. “What do you think of Captain Sholto?” she went on suddenly, to his surprise, if anything in his position could excite surprise more than anything else; and as he hesitated, not knowing what to say, she added: “Isn’t he a very curious type?”
“I know him very little.” But he had no sooner uttered the words than it struck him they were far from brilliant, were poor and flat and very little calculated to satisfy the Princess. Indeed he had said nothing at all that could place him in a favourable light; so he continued at a venture: “I mean I’ve never seen him at home.” That sounded still more silly.
“At home? Oh, he’s never at home; he’s all over the world. To-night he was as likely to have been in Paraguay for instance—though what a place to be!” she smiled—“as here. He is what they call a cosmopolite. I don’t know if you know that species; very modern, more and more frequent and exceedingly tiresome. I prefer the Chinese. He had told me he had had a lot of very interesting talk with you. That was what made me say: ‘Oh, do ask him to come in and see me. A little interesting talk, that would be a change!’”
“She’s very complimentary to me!” said Madame Grandoni.
“Ah my dear, you and I, you know, we never talk: we understand each other without that!” Then the Princess pursued, addressing herself to Hyacinth: “Do you never admit women?”
“Admit women—?”
“Into those séances—what do you call them?—those little meetings that Captain Sholto describes to me. I should like so much to be present. Why not?”
“I haven’t seen any ladies,” Hyacinth said. “I don’t know if it’s a rule, but I’ve seen nothing but men”; and he subjoined, smiling, though he thought the dereliction rather serious and couldn’t understand the part Captain Sholto was playing, nor, considering the grand company he kept, how he had originally secured admittance into the subversive little circle in Bloomsbury: “You know I’m not sure he ought to go about reporting our proceedings.”
“I see. Perhaps you think he’s a spy, an agent provocateur or something of that sort.”
“No,” said Hyacinth after a moment. “I think a spy would be more careful—would disguise himself more. Besides, after all, he has heard very little.” He spoke as with mild amusement.
“You mean he hasn’t really been behind the scenes?” the Princess asked, bending forward a little and now covering the young man steadily with her beautiful deep eyes, as if by this time he must have got used to her and wouldn’t flinch from such attention. “Of course he hasn’t,” she said of herself, however, “and he never will be. He knows that, and that it’s quite out of his power to tell any real secrets. What he repeated to me was interesting, but of course I could see there was nothing the authorities anywhere could put their hand on. It was mainly the talk he had had with you which struck him so very much, and which struck me, as I tell you. Perhaps you didn’t know how he was drawing you out.”
“I’m afraid that’s rather easy,” said Hyacinth with perfect candour; for it came over him that he had chattered with a vengeance in Bloomsbury and had thought it natural enough there that his sociable fellow-visitor should offer him cigars and attach importance to the views of a clever and original young artisan.
“I’m not sure that I find it so! However, I ought to tell you that you needn’t have the least fear of Captain Sholto. He’s a perfectly honest man, so far as he goes; and even if you had trusted him much more than you appear to have done he’d be incapable of betraying you. However, don’t trust him: not because he’s not safe, but because—!” She took herself up. “No matter, you’ll see for yourself. He has gone into that sort of thing simply to please me. I should tell you, merely to make you understand, that he would do anything for that. That’s his own affair. I wanted to know something, to learn something, to ascertain what really is going on; and for a woman everything of that sort’s so difficult, especially for a woman in my position, who’s tiresomely known and to whom every sort of bad faith is sure to be imputed. So Sholto said he would look into the subject for me. Poor man, he has had to look into so many subjects! What I particularly wanted was that he should make friends with some of the leading spirits, really characteristic types.” The Princess’s voice was low and rather deep, but her tone perfectly natural and easy, with a charming assumption—for you could call it nothing else—of more wonderful things than he could count. Her manner of speaking was in fact altogether new to her listener, for whom the pronunciation of her words and the very punctuation of her sentences were the revelation of what he supposed to be society—the very Society to the destruction of which he was dedicated.
“Surely Captain Sholto doesn’t suppose I’m a leading spirit!” he exclaimed with the resolve not to be laughed at any more than he could help.
“He told me you were very original.”
“He doesn’t know, and—if you’ll allow me to say so—I don’t think you know. How should you? I’m one of many thousands of young men of my class—you know, I suppose, what that is—in whose brains certain ideas are fermenting. There’s nothing original about me at all. I’m very young and very ignorant; it’s only a few months since I began to talk of the possibility of a social revolution with men who have considered the whole ground much more than I could possibly do. I’m a mere particle,” Hyacinth wound up, “in the grey immensity of the people. All I pretend to is my good faith and a great desire that justice shall be done.”
The Princess listened to him intently and her attitude made him feel how little he, in comparison, expressed himself like a person who had the habit of conversation; he seemed to himself to betray ridiculous effort, to stammer and emit vulgar sounds. For a moment she said nothing, only looking at him with her exquisite smile. “I do draw you out!” she exclaimed at last. “You’re much more interesting to me than if you were an exception.” At these last words Hyacinth flinched a hair’s breadth; the movement was shown by his dropping his eyes. We know to what extent he really regarded himself as of the stuff of the common herd. The Princess doubtless guessed it as well, for she quickly added: “At the same time I can see you’re remarkable enough.”
“What do you think I’m remarkable for?”
“Well, you’ve general ideas.”
“Every one has them to-day. They have them in Bloomsbury to a terrible degree. I’ve a friend (who understands the matter much better than I) who has no patience with them: he declares they’re our folly, our danger and our bane. A few very special ideas—if they’re the right ones—are what we want.”
“Who’s your friend?” the Princess asked abruptly.
“Ah, Christina, Christina!” Madame Grandoni murmured from the other side of the box.
Christina took no notice of her, and Hyacinth, not understanding the warning and only remembering how personal women always are, replied: “A young man who lives in Camberwell and who’s in the employ of a big wholesale chemist.”
If he had designed in this description of his friend a stronger dose than his hostess would be able to digest he was greatly mistaken. She seemed to gaze tenderly at the picture suggested by his words, and she immediately inquired if the young man were also clever and if she mightn’t hope to know him. Hadn’t Captain Sholto seen him, and if so why hadn’t he spoken of him too? When Hyacinth had replied that Captain Sholto had probably seen him, but, as he believed, had had no particular conversation with him, the Princess asked with startling frankness if her visitor wouldn’t bring the person so vividly described some day to see her.
Hyacinth glanced at Madame Grandoni, but that worthy woman was engaged in a survey of the house through an old-fashioned eyeglass with a long gilt handle. He had perceived much before this that the Princess Casamassima had no desire for vain phrases, and he had the good taste to feel that from himself to such a great lady compliments, even had he wished to pay them, would have had no suitability. “I don’t know whether he would be willing to come. He’s the sort of man that in such a case you can’t answer for.”
“That makes me want to know him all the more. But you’ll come yourself at all events, eh?”
Poor Hyacinth murmured something about the unexpected honour; after all he had a French heredity and it wasn’t so easy for him to say things as ill as his other idiom mainly required. But Madame Grandoni, laying down her eyeglass, almost took the words out of his mouth with the cheerful exhortation: “Go and see her—go and see her once or twice. She’ll treat you like an angel.”
“You must think me very peculiar,” the Princess remarked sadly.
“I don’t know what I think. It will take a good while.”
“I wish I could make you trust me—inspire you with confidence,” she went on. “I don’t mean only you personally, but others who think as you do. You’d find I’d go with you—pretty far. I was answering just now for Captain Sholto; but who in the world’s to answer for me?” And her sadness merged itself in a smile that affected Hyacinth as indescribably magnanimous and touching.
“Not I, my dear, I promise you!” her ancient companion ejaculated with a laugh which made the people in the stalls look up at the box.
Her spirit was contagious; it gave Hyacinth the audacity to say to her, “I’d trust you, if you did!” though he felt the next minute that this was even a more familiar speech than if he had expressed a want of confidence.
“It comes then to the same thing,” said the Princess. “She wouldn’t show herself with me in public if I weren’t respectable. If you knew more about me you’d understand what has led me to turn my attention to the great social question. It’s a long story and the details wouldn’t interest you; but perhaps some day, if we have more talk, you’ll put yourself a little in my place. I’m very serious, you know; I’m not amusing myself with peeping and running away. I’m convinced that we’re living in a fool’s paradise, that the ground’s heaving under our feet.”
“It’s not the ground, my dear; it’s you who are turning somersaults,” Madame Grandoni interposed.
“Ah you, my friend, you’ve the happy faculty of believing what you like to believe. I have to believe what I see.”
“She wishes to throw herself into the revolution, to guide it, to enlighten it,” Madame Grandoni said to Hyacinth, speaking now with imperturbable gravity.
“I’m sure she could direct it in any sense she would wish!” the young man responded in his glow. The pure, high dignity with which the Princess had just spoken and which appeared to cover a suppressed tremor of passion set his pulses throbbing, and though he scarcely saw what she meant—her aspirations appearing as yet so vague—her tone, her voice, her wonderful face showed she had a generous soul.
She answered his eager declaration with a serious smile and a melancholy head-shake. “I’ve no such pretensions and my good old friend’s laughing at me. Of course that’s very easy; for what in fact can be more absurd on the face of it than for a woman with a title, with diamonds, with a carriage, with servants, with a position, as they call it, to sympathise with the upward struggles of those who are below? ‘Give all that up and we’ll believe you,’ you’ve a right to say. I’m ready to give them up the moment it will help the cause; I assure you that’s the least difficulty. I don’t want to teach, I want to learn; and above all I want to know à quoi m’en tenir. Are we on the eve of great changes or are we not? Is everything that’s gathering force underground, in the dark, in the night, in little hidden rooms, out of sight of governments and policemen and idiotic ‘statesmen’—heaven save them!—is all this going to burst forth some fine morning and set the world on fire? Or is it to sputter out and spend itself in vain conspiracies, be dissipated in sterile heroisms and abortive isolated movements? I want to know à quoi m’en tenir,” she repeated, fixing her visitor with more brilliant eyes and almost as if he could tell her on the spot. Then suddenly she added in quite a different tone: “Pardon me, I’ve an idea you know French. Didn’t Captain Sholto tell me so?”
“I’ve some little acquaintance with it,” Hyacinth replied. “I’ve French blood in my veins.”
She considered him as if he had proposed to her some attaching problem. “Yes, I can see you’re not le premier venu. Now your friend, of whom you were speaking, is a chemist; and you yourself—what’s your occupation?”
“I’m just a bookbinder.”
“That must be delightful. I wonder if you’d bind me some books.”
“You’d have to bring them to our shop, and I can do there only the work that’s given out to me. I might manage it by myself at home,” Hyacinth freely professed.
“I should like that better. And what do you call home?”
“The place I live in, in the north of London: a little street you certainly never heard of.”
“What is it called?”
“Lomax Place, at your service,” he laughed.
She seemed to reflect his innocent gaiety; she wasn’t a bit afraid to let him see she liked him. “No, I don’t think I’ve heard of it. I don’t know London very well; I haven’t lived here long. I’ve spent most of my life abroad. My husband’s a foreigner, a South Italian. We don’t live always together. I haven’t the manners of this country—not of any class, have I, eh? Oh this country—there’s a great deal to be said about it and a great deal to be done, as you of course understand better than any one. But I want to know London; it interests me more than I can say—the huge, swarming, smoky, human city. I mean real London, the people and all their sufferings and passions; not Park Lane and Bond Street. Perhaps you can help me—it would be a great kindness: that’s what I want to know men like you for. You see it isn’t idle, my having given you so much trouble to-night.”
“I shall be very glad to show you all I know. But it isn’t much and above all it isn’t pretty,” said Hyacinth.
“Whom do you live with in Lomax Place?” she asked, a little oddly, by way of allowance for this.
“Captain Sholto’s leaving the young lady—he’s coming back here,” Madame Grandoni announced, inspecting the balcony with her instrument. The orchestra had been for some time playing the overture to the following act.
Hyacinth had just hesitated. “I live with a dressmaker.”
“With a dressmaker? Do you mean—do you mean—?” But the Princess paused.
“Do you mean she’s your wife?” asked Madame Grandoni more bravely.
“Perhaps she gives you rooms,” the Princess suggested.
“How many do you think I have? She gives me everything, or has done so in the past. She brought me up; she’s the best little woman in the world.”
“You had better command a dress of her,” Madame Grandoni threw off.
“And your family, where are they?” the Princess continued.
“I have no family.”
“None at all?”
“None at all. I never had.”
“But the French blood you speak of and which I see perfectly in your face—you haven’t the English expression or want of expression—that must have come to you through some one.”
“Yes, through my mother.”
“And she’s dead?”
“Long ago.”
“That’s a great loss, because French mothers are usually so much to their sons.” The Princess looked at her painted fan as she opened and closed it; after which she said: “Well then, you’ll come some day. We’ll arrange it.” Hyacinth felt the answer to this could be only a silent inclination of his utmost stature, and to make it he rose from his chair. As he stood there, conscious he had stayed long enough and yet not knowing exactly how to withdraw, the Princess, with her fan closed, resting upright on her knee, and her hands clasped on the end of it, turned up her strange lovely eyes at him and said: “Do you think anything will occur soon?”
“Will occur—?”
“That there’ll be a crisis—that you’ll make yourselves felt?”
In this beautiful woman’s face there was to his bewildered perception something at once inspiring, tempting and mocking; and the effect of her expression was to make him say rather clumsily, “I’ll try and ascertain—” as if she had asked him whether her carriage were at the door.
“I don’t quite know what you’re talking about; but please don’t have it for another hour or two. I want to see what becomes of the Pearl!” Madame Grandoni interposed.
“Remember what I told you: I’d give up everything—everything!” And the Princess kept looking up at him. Then she held out her hand, and this time he knew sufficiently what he was about to take it.
When he bade good-night to Madame Grandoni the old lady sounded at him with a comical sigh, “Well, she is respectable!” and out in the lobby when he had closed the door of the box behind him he found himself echoing these words and repeating mechanically, “She is respectable!” They were on his lips as he stood suddenly face to face with Captain Sholto, who grasped his shoulder once more and shook him in that free yet insinuating manner for which this officer appeared remarkable.
“My dear fellow, you were born under a lucky star.”
“I never supposed it,” said Hyacinth, changing colour.
“Why what in the world would you have? You’ve the faculty, the precious faculty, of inspiring women with an interest—but an interest!”
“Yes, ask them in the box there! I behaved like an awful muff,” Hyacinth declared, overwhelmed now with a sense of opportunities missed.
“They won’t tell me that. And the lady upstairs?”
“Well,” said Hyacinth gravely, “what about her?”
“She wouldn’t talk to me of anything but you. You may imagine how I liked it!”
“I don’t like it either. But I must go up.”
“Oh yes, she counts the minutes. Such a charming person!” Captain Sholto added with more propriety of tone. As Hyacinth left him he called out: “Don’t be afraid—you’ll go far.”
When the young man took his place in the balcony beside Millicent she gave him no greeting nor asked any question about his adventures in the more privileged part of the house. She only turned her fine complexion upon him for some minutes, and as he himself was not in the mood to begin to chatter the silence continued—continued till after the curtain had risen on the last act of the play. Millicent’s attention was now evidently not at her disposal for the stage, and in the midst of a violent scene which included pistol-shots and shrieks she said at last to her companion: “She’s a tidy lot, your Princess, by what I learn.”
“Pray what do you know about her?”
“I know what that fellow told me.”
“And what may that have been?”
“Well, she’s a bad ’un as ever was. Her own husband has had to turn her out of the house.”
Hyacinth remembered the allusion the lady herself had made to her matrimonial situation; in spite of which he would have liked to be able to reply to Miss Henning that he didn’t believe a word of it. He withheld the doubt and after a moment simply remarked: “Well, I don’t care.”
“You don’t care? Well, I do then!” Millicent cried. And as it was impossible in view of the performance and the jealous attention of their neighbours to continue the conversation at this pitch, she contented herself with ejaculating in a somewhat lower key at the end of five minutes during which she had been watching the stage: “Gracious, what dreadful common stuff!” Hyacinth then wondered if Captain Sholto had given her this formula.