‘A very fine woman, and apparently pretty comfortably off. I wonder why on earth she does it.’
He looked at Hyacinth as if he expected some sort of explanation to be forthcoming.
‘Does what?’ asked Hyacinth at length.
‘Oh, all this revolutionary business: the Croppy, seditious speeches, and now this rot about helping the Boers. What does she stand to gain by it? I don’t suppose there’s any money in the business, and a woman like that might get all the notoriety she wants in her own proper set, without stumping the country and talking rot.’
This way of looking at Augusta Goold’s patriotism was new to Hyacinth, and he resented it.
‘I suppose she believes in the principles she professes,’ he said.
The Captain looked at him curiously, and then took a drink of his whisky-and-soda.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s suppose she does. After all, her motives are nothing to us, and she’s a damned fine woman, whatever she does it for.’
He drank again.
‘It would have been very pleasant, now, if she would have spent the next few weeks with me in Paris. You won’t mind my saying that I’d rather have had her than you, Conneally, as a companion in a little burst. However, I saw at once that it wouldn’t do. Anyone with an eye in his head could tell at a glance that she wasn’t that sort.’