“I have come on foot from the far south of London—how many miles? four or five—and I’m not a particle tired.”
“Che forza, che forza!” murmured Madame Grandoni. “She will knock you up, completely,” she added, turning to Hyacinth with a kind of customary compassion.
“Poor darling, she misses the carriage,” Christina remarked, passing out of the room.
Madame Grandoni followed her with her eyes, and Hyacinth thought he perceived a considerable lassitude, a plaintive bewilderment and hébétement, in the old woman’s face. “Don’t you like to use cabs—I mean hansoms?” he asked, wishing to say something comforting to her.
“It is not true that I miss anything; my life is only too full,” she replied. “I lived worse than this—in my bad days.” In a moment she went on: “It’s because you are here—she doesn’t like Assunta to come.”
“Assunta—because I am here?” Hyacinth did not immediately catch her meaning.
“You must have seen her Italian maid at Medley. She has kept her, and she’s ashamed of it. When we are alone Assunta comes for her bonnet. But she likes you to think she waits on herself.”
“That’s a weakness—when she’s so strong! And what does Assunta think of it?” Hyacinth asked, looking at the stuffed birds in the window, the alabaster Cupid, the wax flowers on the chimney-piece, the florid antimacassars on the chairs, the sentimental engravings on the walls—in frames of papier-mâché and ‘composition’, some of them enveloped in pink tissue-paper—and the prismatic glass pendants which seemed attached to everything.
“She says, ‘What on earth will it matter to-morrow?’”
“Does she mean that to-morrow the Princess will have her luxury back again? Hasn’t she sold all her beautiful things?”